2 poems by Anne Sorbie

Promise of Birch

Below winter’s crust
the earth gestates
the kind of life we’ve 
come to expect of her

We see her anticipation
in the arms of trees
reaching east and west 
embracing the most 

wuthering winds 
accepting their dull roar
as they have for centuries
Their roots 

umbilical by nature
grow beneath the protection
of ever greening cedars
The birch knows

birthing and rebirthing
brings forth life 
in spite of
difficulty or danger

offers boughs of hope
unfurling sweet buds of joy
even though the danger
of annihilation lurks

The birch knows
her most difficult
challenge 
is living

	under the threat
	of blight
	climate change
	war 

And still she gives rise 
after 		
birth
to spectacular silver shimmer

arrays of leaves
that applaud her existence
her resilience
her bravery


Her earthly bearing
depends upon
her steadfast 
vascular fan

a subsurface braiding
outspread and reaching 
for the circumference 
of her verdant crown

and its otherworldly promise
of spring’s delight





Horizon of Hope
(For Ukraine)

What if the birch 
arced her canopy
creating an arbour
from our boreal

forests to yours?

Sung to the Virgin
Beech of the 
Eastern Carpathians
Serenaded her sisters

from their caves in the Taiga

Drew divine 
directions
in the shape 
of celestial crowns?


She’d birth a new
geo-sphere 
from zero point
in our ‘Serengeti’

of the north
Create a shadow 
reaching long 
to the south pole

Her horizon 
an ascension
of millennia: 
future present past.

Birch to beech 
to deciduous 
decision makers
who will outgrow 
fear 
and lack 
of engagement—
brutalist architecture.

Mother of all others
positing the poetry 
of possibility 
Greening curator

of care
experience
memory
story

Enlisting 	still 
unspoiled witnesses 
who show us beauty
in the face of dark truth.

Even the short lived
pregnant poplars
who give rise to willow

will join forces with her
unite latitudes
forever at the 
horizon of hope.

Return to Journal

Anne Sorbie is a writer and editor who lives in Calgary, Canada. Her latest book (her 4th) is (M)othering, an anthology of poetry, prose, and art which she co-edited with Heidi Grogan (Inanna Publications, 2022).  She is currently working on a series of poems focusing on our boreal forests.

WordCity Literary Journal is provided free to readers from all around the world, and there is no cost to writers submitting their work. Substantial time and expertise goes into each issue, and if you would like to contribute to those efforts, and the costs associated with maintaining this site, we thank you for your support.