Open your eyes, ears, heart                                                                           

                                                                                    by Karen L. George


to the layers of beauty and transformation—my daily prayer. See how the creek surface mirrors the dreamy blue sky, the snake of trees. The quilt of blown-down leaves—shades of red, orange, gold, yellow, brown—varied stages of decay. Yes, there’s beauty even in rot. Leaf litter protects the forest from soil erosion, root tips from extreme frost, used to line nests and dens, breaks down to form soil. See how with each gust of wind more unlatch, spiral to join the array. The way water swirls many downstream, clumps some to banks. When leaves float over tree branch reflections, it’s as if they’ve reattached—one last mirage of hanging on.


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"Open your eyes, ears, heart" was inspired by Ellen Ditterbrandt’s painting Seeing is Seeing found pictured at Seeing is Seeing B – American Artists Series

Karen George is author of three poetry collections from Dos Madres Press: Swim Your Way Back (2014), A Map and One Year (2018), and Where Wind Tastes Like Pears (2021). She won Slippery Elm’s 2022 Poetry Contest, and her short story collection, How We Fracture, which won the Rosemary Daniell Fiction Prize, is forthcoming from Minerva Rising Press in January 2024. Her work appears in Adirondack Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Cultural Daily, Salamander, and Poet Lore. Her website is: https://karenlgeorge.blogspot.com/.