As they fall
they quiver in the morning’s breeze
with possibility; each settling
on the awaiting humus gently.
Like a seizure of sun’s faraway light
they come bringing a nuclear fusion
of birth and growth and change.
Paratroopers from the farmer’s hand
flying this way and that far above;
an army of magicians with
hands slower than the eye
they will grow and stretch and multiply
If the ground be right.
Fr. Robert Phelps, O.F.M. Cap. has been a Capuchin friar for 63 years and a priest for almost 55. He served for 26 years in the territory of Guam in the western Pacific and 14 years in Hawaii. He began to write creatively when on a private retreat in a rain forest near Lahaina, Maui, in 1991. He has one full-length book of poems, In the Hug of a Sun that has Stopped, published by Lion Autumn Music Co.; two chapbooks, Ever, and Point of View, published by Finishing Line Press; and one e-book, Incessancy, published by Book Baby. He lives in a community of friars in Beacon, New York.