..-.A Hiking Into Abstract Growth Poem by Debora Short

The under-painting reveals a lightly
Misted late afternoon baby blue sky

Perhaps taking up the top seventh of
This composition, olive meanders

Tinged sunny – green on distant Western
Cedar’d canopies, evergreen icons

Evidence of a much higher kind of
Peace, an ancient species cleaving pre-cambric

Nutrients to nourish precarious
Life, perched closely together, rooted

In steep layers of Valley’s mountainous
Rock, providing shelter and song for

An interesting natively – born crew
Beddings of softest mosses give respite

Bobcats, possums, catbirds, cardinals and
Carolina Chickadees all cradled in

Sweetly swaying boughs of tender’d embrace
Colorful fungus adorns decaying

Hickory trees, heart and sapwood provides
Cellulose rations for termite’s café

Felled horizontal curbs mark ancient
Well traveled hidden paths, a treaded

Multi - generational trek, gateways
To wide open sun - graced feeding hills

Inviting contemplation nurtures all,
Colorful artists, writers, readers, huge

Black bear, white – tailed fawns, yellow jackets
Occasional blue birds flit near thorny

Honey locust, tall violet thistle-d sold
-iers give energy to bumble bee’s sky-

Dances, feathered sedges keeping beat, mellow breezes
Supporting hawk’s purposeful departure

Crows swagger on overhangs shooting the breeze
Cawing bellicosely to whoever might

Listen, over painting of this precious
Cacophony features geometric

Light and sepia - shaded angulate
-d planes, criss -crossed fine antlered twigs

Now naked, deciduous and lichen
Festooned branches tidily sweeping heaven’s

Edge, three distinct stronger trunks dominate
The foreground, a greater ancient, seeming

Wiser warrior envelopes trinities
In and as one vine-laced covenant

(Mountaintop, Tennessee
December 13,2006)