Snowy Welcome Poem by Sally Evans

Each year turns, every year renews.
All variations of green shade shine
thousands in each of a million trees
meanwhile in hundreds of towns the travellers
wander through colours and darkness of their own,
grow, cohere and disintegrate, and spin
far from the boughs they were born under.
The Sun goes round, and the Moon, or seem to.
The far Milky Way cannot be aware
of butterflies or creatures it is shining on
in how many faraway worlds, or whatever their flora,
what lichens flower on their rocks lemon or rose,
buff and pearl, green. How can travellers survive?
They can turn back to sea like a long lived fish,
learning that through varied years they swim
at the surface of deep, deep waters under the sky
through currents and tides, all so similar
in their sudden chasms, in what the waves let go,
who drowns or makes movement in summer or fall.
Only this facility to float, fate-blown, fearless
on a cool ocean, an ability from nowhere
can wash the blindness from them, proffer them
more than one beginning and end,
than one farewell, one April departure,
more than one snowy January welcome.

2008