Poem: The framework of healing

Here is a short poem I wrote while I was convalescing from surgery last September. I have revised it enough - time for it to see the light of day:

 

The framework of healing

 

At home in bed after my surgery,

I gaze through the open window

into the poplar leaves,

which glisten and shimmer

in the autumn sunlight —

endlessly shushing,

sending their trembling vibrato down the branches,

which are not highways for the flighty squirrels after all,

but long nerve connectors:

the old dendrites

transmitting the impulses of those agitated receptors

to deep into the ancient ground 

beneath the window sill,

to a place I cannot see,

but where all my secrets are hidden.

Lorna Harris

September 2010