To Reach the Stars

I watched them through the early winter cold,

playfully young, straight, proud, and

stretching through the snow and clouds to

touch the stars and shine their joy of

tender life with all those points of light

that smiled down on them each frigid night.

I watched as, of a sudden, arctic winds

snarled across their fragile youth,

weighting them down and down and

down with ghost-white snow, until so stooped and

aged beyond their tender years, they

fingered only dark, ice-crusted earth instead of lustrous stars.

I watch them now, still sadly bent,

their summer dance of green a meager,

muted, hobbled waltz.

I grieved for them in winter; and from my own

misshapen life, I grieve with them still now.  But

sometimes, of a soft and windless summer night,

I think I hear them whisper, to each other and to me,

telling of a someday tender Wind that promises to

straighten all our bentness, and bring again the

stars within our reach.