Standing

Those big Maple trees digging
their roots deep grasping fingers
eating warming soil, they comfort me.
I've seen their rough gray bodies
standing, with- standing, cold,
easily snapped but reaching out,
and up, anyway and I think
you, you move me to tears.
How can you stand there
in the midst of all this pain?
How can you stand and
with-stand? How can you?

And yet, your spring will come again.
You will unfurl, your petals,
your colors and in the slow warming
of your body, grow again in the sun.
While I, as a child below,
think, it isn't fair, it looks too easy...
but I know, or at least, the old part
of me that bows to the old part of you
knows; you submit, you bow down
to time, to God, to life as it is
and live! You do what is asked,
what is needed and what is wanted
by those who went ahead of us.
Still, I stand like a child, looking up
and sobbing, leaking pain into
the fallow ground.