Leaf or Eye

The tall poplars burn with pastel fire against dominant evergreen slopes cloaking the valley, the opposite hill, with life. They are our counterparts, dream factories, wanding complex branches up toward radiation, netting it, freighting its energies down to secret roots, an old process. It all fits. We are benign together. But the concrete building opposite does not fit, nor the wires, flat asphalt, the rush of cars, exhausting hydrocarbons, the contrail disappearing over a flight of wing-winking gulls. And I, behind this window glass, fit only in part. Let me then mediate between the possible and the possible, as plants do - as a gardener does, enhancing, ordering, fitting everything in, holding in the hands what needs to be held in the hands, releasing what needs to be released, husbanding this part of the universe with careful fingers, returning it all to where it would have been if it had a choice, a just choice, stepping back to watch, hands out, as each life lifts up to greet morning with its own exultant leaf or eye.