Gravity Rising

by Simon Henderson

Prone loping
My eyes
Cross the ceiling
Calls down the roof
Songs for a loft
Then a window
Big as the world
Frames the forest
Of my cathedral

The philodendron reaches
Up to me
From the rafters
Reaching out like
The green nile of vines
A spiderplant
Chartreuse fireworks
Explodes green tendrils
In the sky of my room

My small cabin
Cowers beneath the cedar
Canopy of shadows
Leans into the forest
On the soft shoulder
Of time

Sings into the
Murky go slow stream
With the lime-green bank
I see the words dart
Under the stones
Like minnows

The autumn fleet
Of alder leaves
Released from august moorings
Sails from vortex
To ripple
To whirlpool
Scattering a Starfleet of striders
Until the last leaf decays
Under waterwove branches
Fecund silt
Of aeons

Mourn not the leaf
Then the seasons
Of the sky

Detritus
Then salmon
Then eagles

Then stars