Cold Press

For we are like olives: only when we’re crushed do we
yield what’s best in us, reads a line from the Talmud.

Is that part of the song, barely audible, of the bird in the boxwood?
Such a long train of years: it’s traveled so far from the station of childhood.

Don’t pine, don’t yield. The waves come back, sometimes with driftwood.
Darker and denser, the colors and strands of old life in the heartwood.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.