Shifting their weight from side to side

At first light,
The bare trees sway,
but not together.
Shifting their weight from side to side,
they are like a crowd
that has waited all night for a gate to open.

~ Ted Kooser. February 13. Breezy and pleasant.

Preface of Ted Kooser’s “Winter Morning Walks: One hundred postcards to Jim Harrison“:

In the autumn of 1998, during my recovery from surgery and radiation for cancer, I began taking a two-mile walk each morning. I’d been told by my radiation oncologist to stay out of the sun for a year because of skin sensitivity, so I exercised before dawn, hiking the isolated country roads near where I live, sometimes with my wife but most often alone.

During the previous summer, depressed by my illness, preoccupied by the routines of my treatment, and feeling miserably sorry for myself, I’d all but given up on reading and writing. Then, as autumn began to fade and winter came on, my health began to improve. One morning in November, following my walk, I surprised myself by trying my hand at a poem. Soon I was writing everyday.

Notes:

• Related Ted Kooser Posts: Lucky I am to go off to my cancer appointment. And, I am alive and walking.
• Ted Kooser Bio.
• Photograph – Tree Tops, Kelly’s Eye Picks