Oak
Tell me your past.
tell me your present.
tell me how the cracks
on your wizened bark
Split:
tell me every one.
tell me how red
like the color of clay
came to fill these fissures,
how the memory
of a squirrel’s paws
Feels,
still dancing across you.
how a woodpecker’s beak once
Rat-tat-tatted,
drilling miniscule holes
high among your wise,
creaking branches.
how…
~
Tree of power,
tree of life,
your heartbeat is made
of the dozen birds whose wings
Rustle
among your green leaves,
of the hundred crickets
Cheeping
in the tall grass of your meadow
at night, of the million
and two ant and centipede legs
Crawling
deep inside you:
they are your life,
and you are theirs.
~
Oh, tree, tell me
that your life will last forever
here in your clearing.
Tell me
that here, among queen anne’s lace
and breezes that whisper
through tall grass,
here, with your branches
Spread
like wings over your clearing,
that nothing will ever change.
comfort me, tree.
Tell me
that you will never die.
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