Higher Still and Higher
Cold saw and breeze, birch
Branch: sawdust rises up on
Winter wind to limbs.
~ Phillip Whidden
The birch tree is an innocent, its white
Increased by splatches. Maybe even black
Is innocent the way that wind, since slight,
Sways sinless. Autumn breezes have this knack
Of snagging bits of sawdust way up high
Where they were never meant to be. The tree
Belongs there and its roots are meant to ply
The land. These allied innocents, all three,
The sawdust, tree and wind did not propose
To cause a meaning. Eased the seasons do
Their thing, perhaps too much like prose,
But out comes poetry with creeds shot through.
No harmony exists and discord jars,
Yet, stilled, we look for music in the stars.
~ Phillip Whidden