Dappled Light

The leaves hold whispers the branches understand, and light comes down in gentle hands.

Not all at once — it has learned patience from the slow work of a hundred summers.

It comes in coins, in shillings of gold spent on the path and the path spends them back.

I stood there long enough to be counted among the trees, long enough that a wren mistook me for a quiet thing

and went about her business in the hedge beside my ear, and I have not been paid a finer compliment since.