In Early Morning
English is not sufficient to say
the sound of a thousand silver dollar aspen leaves
-wafer thin and diaphanous-
moving rapidly back and forth in morning breeze
knocking into each other
delicately, like millions of heeled dance steps
heard in the wash of a hundred mile distance.
Light filters through them as they move,
cupping and dropping the shine-spill
from tiny green fingertips.
Across the road where I stand silent
struck still
watching and listening,
the ponderosas are answering with a sigh.
It comes through the multitude of faintly flexing needles,
It comes swimming around their many trunks
with cracked skin like old women
who have stood with their ankles in the wet ground for centuries.
The sun is rising over fan rock in the
east and this music will fade
with the movement of light.
In sixty seconds’ time
this pre-birth hush of
hanging in infinity
and the quiet sense that
all is done,
all accomplished,
all set right- will pass.
The sun will top hunter mesa and
awake the people and mules in the campground below.
In the valley where I pass summer days
the crew will push at their eyes with balled fists
and stumble to breakfast.
Aspen leaves have awakened outstretched plains of peace within me.
Their music will tickle, beckon, and lull my spirit through the day.
I will read about them in the words of poets
who have heard their music
or something exactly like it
in the Sahara or the mountains of Tibet.
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