love this much

Is it the quiet way
the little yellow leaves
on the almost bare tree blow?

Or how the streetlight
stares a spotlight
at the spidery arms
of this hovering, hunching tree?

What brings you
to love this much

as if this world is a picture
someone painted
just for you?

Tree

Is there anything more magnificent
than the bare-branched tree
that stands
in the thundering windstorm
and shakes?

Like this one,
how it bends
but doesn't break,
how it digs its roots deep,
how it extends its bony arms.
How it fits itself
just so
into the deep, green forest.

Can you feel how it is
at once
alone
and still a part
of everything?

There's a story about a girl who saves a village with her singing

Everyone in her village is disappearing.
She starts to sing
and discovers it stops the disappearing,
so she keeps singing.

Soon she knocks on all the people’s doors to sing to them,
and they reappear
and then there are more
until the town is alive again.

I dream one night it’s true
and I'm her.

But my family is gone and they won't come back
no matter how much I sing.

The moment starts to melt

and uncover its soft white roots
and buried layers
of crimson soot
and soil.
The magic
underneath

you never saw.