Bouncing Boughs Beat on the Sky

BOUNCING BOUGHS BEAT ON THE SKY
March 12, 2005

Bouncing boughs beat on the sky
like fists against a blue-shirted chest
and flash their foliage to the spying sun
as the wild wind rams through them.
Only the songs of the unseen birds
are heard in the buffeting branches
that keep time to the soughing sway
of the wind-blown forest.
The migrating cumulus crawl
into these battered sticks
like white bears that climb
the glistening glacier tops.
Stretching a paw one reaches
for the airplane that growls
through the network of limbs and twigs
coming out unscathed on the other side
and sometimes in the sibilant
turmoil a lone kookaburra
lights upon the leaning tree,
throws back its head and laughs.