Gifting

By Catherine de Vinck

The hands of the clock turn rightcounting the hours sliding off time’s frame.In the dreamtime, the earth rolls onin the great void, ever recitingits tale of fertile beauty.Instructions have been left: how to care for,how to love, what is fragile, easily harmed.But we forget, pull out healthy roots,disperse ripe seeds to loss,cut and burn the trees.We try to decipher the past,pick up scattered bones of ancestors,display them under glass in museums.Still we do not read what they define:continuity of the strong filaments bindingage to age, people to people, woman to man.

Yet the gifting never ceases:nests fill with eggs, fields swellwith edible plants, water continuesto rise out of deep, hidden wells.Pulled by the moon, sea waves unscrollthemselves, foaming on the beach.What disappears returns,defying decay and death.In a corner of the yarda single tulip blooms year after yearnaming itself red and newin the spring air.