Evergreen On Blue
I love the leaves outside my bedroom window.
They have hues not elsewhere seen,
Shot through with rich green living light.
When viewed with horizontal head,
Their overlapping lines lie layered into sky
To draw the eye along ascending spirals,
Out away toward a beautiful infinity,
With odd-shaped bits of blue
Revealed through branching gaps,
A reconstructed, abstract jigsaw puzzle:
“Evergreen On Blue” ©1986.
The light that laps their curving surfaces
Seems painted on, so slowly does the sun
Change its position. Stirred by breeze,
But not too fast for eye to follow,
How they glitter when they flutter,
Light and shadow dancing minuets,
Entrancing dappled tunes, the slow rotation
Of kaleidoscopes in just two placid colors.
They need the light as much as I,
And gather it like grateful solar panels,
Emerald energy receivers, webbed
With power lines, lithe twigs. Dots, green on blue,
Connected in a graceful, lacy pattern,
One more lovely way to trace life to its source.
And so alive, so glowing! Yet so delicate
That when a backyard bird went winging through,
It seemed a gross intrusion (an idle monarch
Later flitting in seemed more to standard).
What a pleasure when the things we love
Assert their presence in our lives.
And more, that in our minds they never perish,
Death or darkness never takes them, so that
Whether under glass, these gently swaying leaves,
Or with no barrier between, their quiet light
Is always glowing there before us, evergreen.
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Submitted on May 01, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:13 min read
- 3 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | ABCX DEXF XXFX GXAX EGXD EXFX XXFX XXXX XXCB |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,435 |
Words | 245 |
Stanzas | 9 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
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"Evergreen On Blue" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 12 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/70586/evergreen-on-blue>.
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