I Found A Stick

I Found A Stick
———————–
While walking in the woods below the Edge
I found a stick blown down by last night’s storm.
I wasn’t looking for it, but was drawn
along a winding path which led me to
a pair of Birch trees, standing guard beside
a Chestnut. It was from one of these trees
that my particular stick had once been part
before Storm Francis (we’ll return to that)
had sent it tumbling wildly to the ground.
I picked it up and weighed it in my hand
then with my penknife rounded off the ends
which had been damaged by its recent fall.
The bark that clothed my stick, which on first glance
looked just like any other stick, now shone
with colour: green and white and bronze and more
whose names I do not know, if they have names
at all. If this were in a gallery
it would be honoured as a masterpiece
but it was simply on a winding path
beneath the Edge, where none but me passed by.
St Francis, after whom the storm was named,
(or not, I do not know) taught us to see
our fellow creatures as God’s children too,
with whom we share this wild and winding world.
And so as I walked home I held my stick,
a masterpiece of colour, shape and form,
thankful that I’d been blessed to receive
a gift from Sister Birch and Brother Wind.

Rich Clarkson, August 2020