And the Stars and Trees Prostrate Themselves (55:6)

By Siham Karami

A stand of trees:

their foreheads press the sky

toward the brightness

that descends into their hands

outstretched to green with light

digested and transformed.

They rise in counterpoint, another way

of gravity, undaunted rivers coursing

through their trunks, their branches,

heavy yet light, their sighs

inaudible in breezes,

their waters moving upward.

To questions of to be,

their sacred chemistry replies

within each trunk that holds a world,

and leaves what grows to grow,

leaves what lives to rise.

 

This poem was previously published in The Centrifugal Eye.

Siham Karami co-owns a technology recycling company and lives in Florida. Her poetry appears or will appear in The Comstock Review, Measure, Right Hand Pointing, The Rotary Dial, Atavic Poetry, Unsplendid, Möbius, String Poet, The Centrifugal Eye, Mezzo Cammin, Angle Poetry, Kin Poetry Journal, Wordgathering, Loch Raven Review, Raintown Review, Innisfree Journal, and  other journals and anthologies. Winner of a Laureates’ Choice prize in the Maria W. Faust sonnet contest and a Pushcart Prize nominee, she blogs at sihamkarami.wordpress.com, where she posts occasional book reviews.