With Canopies Keeping

With Canopies Keeping

(“If then your body is full of light, with no part of it dark, it will be as full of light as when a lamp gives you light with its gleam.” Luke 11:36)

And in the forest with canopies keeping the furled smoke
of a hundred distant campfires just above our heads,
the gray shadows and crackling soot divided the
aspen boulevards and made addresses hard to locate
nearing the last light of day.

There was no fear, no threat, all was contained except

the misguided insistence that kept many from finding
the ring of friends sharing stories and passing songs late.

The smoke stayed well past sunset, and the whole forest was

the same tuxedo black of the shadows just hours before.
But in that heaviness of night forest air is the sweet breath
of pine scent and summer smoke. And though late among
the upright stands the night itself seems to reign, the
evidences of life are magnified; a crackling twig or
a hoot owl’s call are french horn and percussion close by.

And in the darkening night that might turn another away,

the campfires, like lighthouses among the woods, catch
the wanderers’ eyes and lead them by human voice and
eventual affection.

Every circle with friends and new ones warming, is not
simply an invention, but evidence of redemption; a fire
and a song with a final arc of friendship to wanderers
in the night.