Happy Place
Some live their happy place every day. They don’t need to leave.
Happy Place
He’ll never forsake the river, but waits
for the splash of another trout rising,
the symphony of ripples after storms,
or the trickles traced in long days of drought.
His roots roll is the cool of soil, sipping
long from the flow, lifting wetness high toward
the thick verdure, sharing a submerged toast
with woven friends of fungal threads below.
His light limbs stretch beyond his canopy
and shed layers of bark over years though
young nodes burst from branches toward the rill,
each budding with hope to leaf and fruit-fill—
to feed and cradle the next oriole,
to feel a squirrel’s patter toward the fresh fig,
to watch loosed seeds drop and float downstream,
praising the sweetness of riparian being.
He will never pine for another place,
but leans the regal crown of his essence
toward calls from the generous beck, finding
himself, embedded, in river presence.
This poem was first published in a beautiful issue of Clayjar Review: Happy Place
The Clayjar Review is wonderful.