Bliss

by Eileen Moeller

is stitched together with pine needles and song.
The air is a clean quilt wrapped around you.
It smells like dug earth and resin.

The world is clothed in such rough bark.
Whatever softness it has is often out of reach,
until rain begins to sift through the overhanging leaves
like it could go on for at least a hundred years.

You watch small birds tumble out of the branches,
like heavy droplets, hitting the ground and rising
with a chirp, then falling again, over and over,
and you have a front row seat to their
little circus, which goes on for over an hour.

Soon you’ve forgotten everything else,
who you are, what you had to do today,
whether or not you are worthy of this
emptying out that comes to you, this
letting go, that allows you to enter your body,
that animal that loves you, and never tires of waiting.

A Note About the Author: Eileen Moeller has an M.A. in Creative Writing from Syracuse University, and poems in Ars Medica, Feminist Studies, Paterson Literary Review, Blue Fifth Review, and Philadelphia Stories. Her two books are Firefly, Brightly Burning and The Girls In Their Iron Shoes.