“In each pause I hear the call.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
The world is quieter now, held in a prolonged fermata.
Yet just beneath the silence, and beyond the threshold
of hearing, an interlude, rich and dissonant, throbs
against the deep waters of the earth, like the beat of a broken heart.
So much is lost.
Then I see a forest veiled in lush green
while the Carolina Wrens drown my thoughts,
and the backyard bushes–oh, those bushes!–
have grown more in two months than in two years.
Kinder now, more generous, the earth has answered the call of grief.
…………….
Jan Stanton is a poet in Charleston, South Carolina, where her source of inspiration lies with a forest that begins in her backyard.
Lovely. Always wanted to see Charleston, those wrens and bushes….