Tree Pose

Each year they make their little pointed hands
go from black and bare to burst
of sometimes flowers or red, but mostly delicious green.

Mary says they turn themselves into something else.
I have tried that myself,
twisting in the cyclone of doubts, swaying and breaking.

But I don’t always get newness. And my roots are not
deep, at times, bare like the knees of cypress
or willows too close to stream rush or tide drawn bare.

Here, in silence when my feet are pressed naked and cold
on rough planks, I unfold. And like my rising arms,
all my visions rush up to blossom fresh and new.

— VH McKinnie

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