Air Earth Fire Water

A misty drizzle falls over Puget Sound—

enters every living thing

thimble berries I pick from the roadside—

berries red, soft, tender

stain my fingers red

flood my tongue with tang.

Water seeps into leaves, grass, me.

I’m as damp as the black crenulated slug

crossing the forest path with deliberate gravity.

Under a lush green cedar bough I lean

on its stout rough trunk—

I feel the qi in flowing throuhg every living thing

And in water, minerals, earth and from

the sun cupped yellow marsh marigolds.

A sweetness breathes from pink rose hedges,

chicory stands sentinel for my longing

for blue.  Ferns breathe green ideas

into the fallen leaves.

Water falls on an unseen singer haunting

the forest canopy with an unearthly scale of notes.

Imbued, baptized the networks of roots under

my boots know I am here—the news

travels all the way to the salty Sound.

Octopus, seals, otters hear the news.

They know my love of them and the gray whale

I greeted in the Baja last winter breaches

its great body as it looks shoreward.

We are all joined in this joy.

                                      --Barbara Spring