The morning throws fingers of light
Softly tickling through the tree trunks

The branches are moving like hands
Weaving shimmers of silken threads

They vibrate and sustain in symphony
Strumming the wood as keys on a piano

Each note presses us to turn and look
To let go of words and drop our reading

To reach and take down an instrument
Wrapped in swaddling waiting to sing

The one that will undress and reclothe us
That one who sews my heart on a sleeve

Perhaps this is why the sun's head comes
Striding as a wise old sage of the East

Now eclipsing the willowy tendrils
Now embroidering the frost-bitten grass

Comes as a traveller in search of a child
Arching its gold rays to the distant West

Where one tiny star still from the night
Is lingering silently over the sleeping farm

The music of birth has risen from the lake
It is echoing now through a stable door

We return to our books by another route
Footsteps in rhythm to a different drum