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 through every living thing

and in water, minerals, earth and from

sun cupped golden marsh marigolds.

A sweetness breathes from pink rose hedges,

chicory stands sentinel for my blue longings.

Ferns breathe green ideas

From graceful filigrees.

Mist falls on an unseen singer haunting

the forest canopy with an unearthly scales of notes.

Imbued, baptized networks of roots under

my boots know I am here—the news

travels all the way down to the salty Sound.

Octopus, seals, sea 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