The Innisfree Poetry Journal

www.innisfreepoetry.org

by Paul Grayson

A BANK IN THE WOODS

There was a bank in the woods I knew

In days long gone where the bloodroots grew,

Alone in the dead leaves, just exposed,

Facing the rumble of the road,

Their petals white and few and frail

Barely surviving by the trail.

For merely a minute in the spring

Was the bloodroot's time for flowering.

No other flower, no other leaf,

It was bloodroot time, so swift, so brief,

At the foot of a gaunt and sunlit tree,

For companions a titmouse and chickadee.

And the years have passed and I still know

The way to the bank where the bloodroots grow.