To Burst With Sap Poem by Robert Farrell

To Burst With Sap



To burst with sap, to bubble with the foam
of the snow-melting's brooks, to germinate and rise and
bloom, to speak- with the lightness of the winds,
with the purling of the springs,
with the sensing of the touch,
To live is to flourish, to pass our days is to grow,
or must be so; for cold airs surround us
and ice-clouds about us glister and entomb.
Life is a passing moment, a space of time;
it is an hour of peace, following upon an hour of sadness,
all raising together (though some, it seems, erode)
an edifice, a hall of stone, with variegated facades
of marble fineness and granite power. It is a
building: no, a building mountain, rising,
straining, piercing the ice-clouds, climbing for the Sun;
And all bedecked with trees, of needles green and
spreading, sucking roots, and trout that play,
and deer that browse, and bear that roam. But
does a mountain live? or rather hold, as on a stage,
where players speak, and characters unfold?
Life is not a drama; it is a marketplace
of intermingling feelings and minds,
of ideas fresh and formulas stale,
of conventions trite and inspirations bold.
It is a game, a task, a struggle,
spread out within a charged but shortened space;
yet not a space, a point, an evolving instant,
a melodious moment mingling in the symphony of time.
Thus life is a passing moment, or is in each passing moment,
ever passing, ever renewed, in a resurrecting moment,
ever refreshing a differentiating organism, the Universe.
It is an hour to be enjoyed, a time to play
and to experience, to suffer, and to respond:
to create, as a whitened Father stretching
his Word to transubstantiate clay, for
Life is Spirit, a Breathing Energy,
source of all motion, tend, and act,
the ecstatic impulse of which we are all suffused.
And the cosmic dust, and the harmonious spheres,
and the pink-skinned babe, all tremble with this life,
implanted as a seed, and of which, still received,
we weave our days, and build our homes,
and cultivate the harvest of our years.
To burst with sap, to bubble with foam,
to germinate and rise and bloom, to speak-
with the lightness of the winds,
with the purling of the springs,
with the sensing of the touch-
to live is to flourish.

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