This Midden Earth
In heat, the melting ice of glaciers
slipping ever quicker to the sea
as if they yearned, also, for the pleasures
of anhilation. Could you be
my little Nina, sending painful tempests
to the parched and fire swept hills of Eden?
Rising tides, ocean breakers kissing
at the feet of cliffs standing a thousand
years in lonely isolation. And here I, missing
my life and those of a hundred generations,
heard nature's truth: empty nests,
and all those wings unbeaten.
In the running cracks, in the hollows,
across widening plains and pillows,
silent warming earth pursues and fallows,
it dries the tears of willows,
'til all the tumbling turning rests,
and all the joyous hills are turned to midden.