To A Birch Nancy Cook

TO A BIRCH

Nancy Cook

New year’s child, first born, I love you best.

When January snows glaze fallow fields and rabbits rest, and crocii are yet in the womb, your roots run in freight-train tracks below ground, your vibrant sap thrums beneath my boots. And as

the sky gives up its black mood, yields minutes, then hours to the sun, upward you shoot to pierce the earth’s damp vulnerability, and upward you climb, always upward, not inclined, like so many of your kin,

to detour into heavy, leafed-out branches. When June’s Beltane fires burn and primrose are strewn, you, long-limbed pale-fleshed child, are grown. Beneath the solstice sun your skin is dry tissue,

every leaf lighter than the air. And as the others play catch-up, you twirl with every sudden rise of wind, bend and sway, lift waifish arms and blithely wave. You teach me, child, how to reach, how to defy limits,

not by climbing, by gazing up, up, through the open windows of your strong and delicate hide, toward skies ocean-water deep and blue, and clouds that slowly melt like long-ago January winter snows.