Trees and Wires

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She sips hot tea

and watches snow

fall through the trees

and those ugly electric wires

that slice across her view.

She sighs…

“The world is too much with us,”

William Wordsworth said so long ago.

What would he say now?

Children play outside

with phones stuck to their faces

and never look up.

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It doesn’t stick.

She turns from the window

to her beloved books:

poetry, philosophy,

nature, metaphysics –

millions and billions of words

strung in constellations of idea.

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She imagines stirring them up

into one large pot

over a hot fire

and wonders what the bottom line

would be – the final alchemy.

Perhaps this one plea:

to speak our love now

before the die is cast,

before we sign our exodus;

to lift ourselves

by bootstraps woven

with the dreams of Gaia.

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Her tea has gone cold.

She turns back to the window

where the snow is finally sticking

and the trees are turning white.

And seventy times seven birds

are perched upon the wires.

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© 2016  Betty Hayes Albright

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