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There is Sunlight, There is Wind, a poem by Samuel Franklin


There is Sunlight, There is Wind


We begin as vegetables, 

climbing up from seeds 


like pumpkin vines atop 

the wooden garden trellis.


All winter we’ve waited, 

tubers in the frozen earth, 


dreaming of leeks and apples, 

the breeze in the flowering pear. 


II

There is an acorn within me, 

skipping madly between my ribs.


O once I was wild grass, ecstatic in sunlight, 

the music of oak leaves like lute notes


toward which I stretched and bristled.

There is an acorn within me, 


reaching tannic feelers through the tips 

of my fingers. The roots are nuzzling down, 


down, through the soles of my feet, 

speaking in the earth, listening to moles. 


III

The dusk-sun warps among the buds 

of the grasping oak, the long fingers 


touching the belly of the sky, shivering. 

Our hands splay against the radiance, 


becoming blades of yuccas. 

Winds wing like doves in our hair, 


O there is sunlight in the wind,

rain is kissing the bursting trees. 

 

 

Samuel Franklin is the author of two books of poetry: Bright Soil, Dark Sun (2019) and The God of Happiness (2016). He resides in Bloomington, Indiana, where he enjoys making useful things out of wood scraps and losing staring contests to his cats. He can be found at samueltfranklin.com.