harvest

What if every death, small and large is just a winter?
Like a bear's heart beating slower, slower
colder, but not lost---

Great trees don't have hearts,
only great veins, arteries
simple sap standing still,
water freezing up from root to leaf,
the bright dry leaves falling down.
The trees turn inward, living off of
what they gathered, in silence.

Make my heart like a tree
like a bear's heart, now, just before winter
now for the harvest.
Let us slow down
let our bodies search every cell
for every bright thing
from the past year.

Not so long ago we prepared the cold land
for spring, frost still on the grass
the cold and barren dawns. Just when you thought
it would never come, the fruits and flowers
blossom, in awe, almost, of their luck---
to have so many hours in this heat,
the air thick with life, with birds
bees, almost everywhere, such life.

Then the fruits drop away and rot, as the world cools
but the heart of things, beneath the thick bark,
beneath the chestbone,
there we keep the sun, the warmth,
we knit it around us.
So we pause, and remember
on the darkest cold winter night that's coming
there are summers in our hearts
moments in the sun to be grateful for.
Like a bear's layer of fat, like a tree's dormant body---
be still, and remember.