New

This is not my dormant season:

Every day, the sap is running

smooth and cold and sweet

along my inner courses

as the fresh form swells and claims new space,

ventures out across the wheeling rays of day,

skin touched, as for the first time,

by sun, by rain, in the eager stretch of greening

that meets the tingling air

And in the unseen places

vast networks of fine and tender roots

spring out along the paths within the soil

This is how it is —

selves of yesterday

fall off like sheathes, like scales,

each day I give myself to this life.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 20, 2015