Ask

^{John William Waterhouse, The Sorceress}

Know if lives in nature’s song—
thick on spring’s rustle

between every breath that comes
verdant and sublime, there was
an almost,
never rooted,
a moon-rose, eggshell fragile—

but ask, ask, ask, she says–
for dreams,
a dance on a long bee-path,
soft blooms of dusk,
a shadow-fiddle
like a lullaby as night’s blanket rests.

Watch, as frost-lichens bloom,
and then color, stone to berry-warm

reflections in ancient rivers–
a murmur, a laugh,
the embrace of sky,

rippling secrets, there and gone.

The Oracle really wanted me to ask today. Every set I looked at gave me that word. Then these lines came, and the poem fell into place.