The dance of sustenance

I watched a bird tiptoe down a branch today.

It performed a sort of shimmy,

right foot left foot, right foot left,

moving side to side, its beak pointing

at the dried and brittle tips 

of the berries at the branch’s end.

Berries? Or just dried disappointment?

The bird’s destination seemed more symbol of wintry 

death than sign of sunny pre-spring 

sustenance.

The branch bent beneath the bird’s advance,

leaning wistfully against another, itself supporting

its own bird having its own expedition into the lightness

of life and the unexpected if impermanent flexibility 

of the food chain.

Essence

Our pasts await us. 

They lie fallow and fertile in the fields of time, this moment 

clumped like desiccated dirt, filled

with rock and inorganic detritus, 

that moment also, subtle as

            luminescent loam, glowing

            in the reflection of memory

we reach from them, stretching

            beyond their clutch, their grasp

they reach for us, extending

            beyond yesterday’s hold on who

            why and from whence we are.

Who? Am I? Are you?

Photos, tales, and biased recollection offer

perspective that is alternately 

            grounding 

            gratifying

            unsettling

            insoluble

            mysteriously alluring and yet

            mesmerizingly alarming.

We are not what we seem, you and I.

We are neither where we have grown nor

where we grow to

or for.

For it is neither then nor when which makes

us who we are. 

It is here. 

It is now.

It is how we understand our inter-relatedness, and life’s

            interdependence.