Abundance

A poem by Sally Benzon

The sounds of trees
Who fail to be nowhere
If they are not heard

Humor into sounds
Of all leaps and sizes.
The voice unspoken

Ages the weathered tongue
To compose an echoing body.
Elates from the heartbeat

Into zero-minus gravity
Where impulse conveys
The stars of night to guide

The toil of a dung beetle’s trail.
Life here. Life now.
Measures of action

Seen and unseen,
Tone on tone
The gist of orbits

Tide with the pine trees
And their wingless whispers.
Contrary hearsay on the horizon

Is quickened with decay
Sweetened by moonlight.
An ending looms at shoreline.

This, then: a woman of the immortals
Whose rogue wave is conceived
To peak scale; improbably, delicate in listening

For all the lone Earth to resound
Within her, free float, the Eternal:
Again! Lasts to open pitch.