A-Z Challenge, F is or fish

F is for "fish." These clownfish are from my book, as yet unpublished, Benny's Favorite Color.

and for National poetry month,

February Tree Dreams

Under the ground, a dark and perpetual night, almost as void

of life as deep space, presses cold teeth against the dreaming trees,

but the trees sink further into their roots and listen all the way up

the long fibers of their empty veins to owls rustling in their nests,

to small movements inside the eggs, to the first cracking

that heralds these winter babies, these messengers of spring.

Lost in their roots, sunk in depths of the frozen earth, trees dream

of sweet sunshine, of snow melting, of the slow unfurling of leaves

and flowers, of fledgling owls stretching their wings and launching

into the great pale blue of treacherous air. The trees remember

summer nights, owls lifting silently from their branches, occluding

the moon and stars, or hooting to one another from high above

the branches where the little diurnal birds rest in their nests.

The trees dream the smell of summer wind and the wet caresses

of rain. As they weave into their dreams the smells

of their own flowers, the tastes of their own nectar,

the touch of the bees’ pollen-laden feet and gentle tongues,

the taste of frozen earth loses its pungent bitterness.

Mary Stebbins Taitt

and

Fir-filtered

What if, instead of dying flowers, perfume

smelled like mountaintops, like granite

and fir-filtered wind? Breezes lift our feet

from the rock and fragrance-scented air

buoys us up over golden rows of mountains.

You laugh like a child taking his first step

out onto the taut surface of water

and instead of sinking, we skate

on that tensile surface that quivers

like my heart when you reach

the long pin feathers of your wings

and wrap them all light and tickle

and remember around me.

Mary Stebbins Taitt

I am publishing this on Wednesday night, because I've been sick all week and feel worst in the morning, so this is for Thursday.