"Doubt" by Frequent Contributor Terri Lynn Cummings

Doubt

Terri Lynn Cummings

Leaves fall    then speak of return

while my desire considers them 

as what let go of me 

Faith rises    follows the sun 

as it turns away like a lost love

Trees fold up their robes by winter

ease beneath blankets of snow

sleep in long-stemmed knowledge 

awake into something more than

years left rotting on low limbs

memories that flake like shed skin

shade as it hides in remorse

I drift with wood smoke

my roots in my pocket

reach for the branch where life resides

lift my head  

from the crook of winter’s arm 

rise from the couch of myself

like a hundred winged bodies

fly into sky from which will fall 

feathers    or blessings

Poet’s Notes:  With fall on my mind, and November’s birth of a long-deceased son, I cradled my thoughts into a poem. Faith is all around me when I choose to acknowledge it. Yet doubt lifts its head like a weed that must be plucked from the ground before it spreads. Therefore, I write and banish doubt from the page (most of the time).