From Word To Word

The song of cicadas thickens the air
between the rhododendrons like a fog
on the mountainside when trees gravely wade
into the whiteness like a sacred stream,
but now the soft pale sacred shore recedes
to the reservoir’s bright blue suddenness,
and the trees with nothing to hold them rush
in vastness to a shore they dare not cross,
for the blue is too sacred or too profane,
and they stand before it in endless rows
climbing into mountains, through the thick song
of cicadas mingling the scent of vined
white roses, like a vast host in worship
before a too sacred altar, their prayers
whispered to the drone of cicada song
the incense of small white roses on vines
that strive to be sacred fog on the slopes,
climbing by the count of years to the peaks,
and collecting trilliums in their wake,
and giving home to the discarded husks
of those who would mingle songs with white rose
to thicken air among rhododendrons
as trees worship a bright and sudden blue.