Dormant

The pull that flesh exerts
this season feels suspended.
For days the rain sheeted,
damping the cold dirt.
Dry and dormant things
gasped for air underground
in tunnels running near
and around buried roots.
A line of leafless trees
swayed at a meadow's edge;
a field of pale grass
lies flat in shearing winds,
a low, hollow lallation
against a stinging silence
that smothers human sounds.
Cold to the touch, this land
of immense disappearances,
where dusk had stalled
and squeezed breath from the sky,
encompasses us, alone
together, turning our senses,
the broken bits we use
to know ourselves, the raw
force, tight as a bud,
we feel will burst out
in full, seducing flowers,
sprung alive from our bodies.

--
Royal Rhodes is a retired educator who taught courses on Early, Medieval, Reformation and Modern Christianity. He lives in a small village in the heartland of Ohio, surrounded by
a nature conservancy and Amish farms.