I pause beneath the dripping leaves
Chanting lines of children’s rhymes
Happy in my walking time.
Then arching on the crowded hill
Lining through the pines,
A ragged wave of silvery ash
Standing naked still.
The photographic negatives
Preserved with those green positives
For that Grand Developer
To continue some great chemistry
Of sun and soil and wind and time
That flows along with its own rhyme.
