ALL RESPONSES |
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Her patterns grow, but she breaks.
Why weep at loss of one branch,
when so many thrive?
Those strongest, close to root,
may go first. It is wind's work.
Better now than June,
when seeds, heavy with sun,
fall on forest floor,
to bury small hands in earth. |
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That last vertebra shows bark on bark
leaving the arthritic condition of the
lower limbs just a bit too exposed
to the testimonies of a spring bloom.
Now your frame houses starlings,
red squirrels and Jacobson’s Siamese
during hours the half moon
flies, fourteen nights before rain.
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i fear
i have dutch elm disease
starting
deep, ever deep down
where
my roots are an open wound
where
the festered eradicate hope
letting
others decide whether
or not
i can be saved by chemical dependency |
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my son says he’s always
been partial to my trees
he can see
my emotions
in the branches
since i was a child
when i’m
wounded
or angry
i draw a tree
the repetition
of the branches
is tranquilizing
no two trees are alike
& freedom therein
i’m submerged
sedated
with every branch
pain
peels away
& when i break surface
i’m renewed
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I want this to be a drawing,
simple black pencil lead on paper,
older than memory of drawing,
a great ear to the wind.
I want this to have been traced
on a living room couch decades ago,
the radio on, the program
“Intersanctum.” I want to hear
that inner door opening, creaking
like a tree’s sighs in a storm.
You are beauiful, Tree, symetrical.
How did you delineate your poetry,
your myriad masks, your X-ray-
geometrical camouflage?
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Shades of Stanley Kunitz’s “Testing Tree,”
the lone tree on a lonely hill.
Shades of oaks and beeches
Goths and Saxons once worshipped.
Shades of the Lakota poplar
decorated by scarves with the colors
of the wind’s four directions.
And now this morning, this healing tree,
dream tree with geometric notations.
Random or divine? A question
plaguing existence from the beginning.
The answer clear for any tree to read.
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we heal, simply, others,
like leaves resting next to a bare tree stripped
naked by seasons, naked like we all are
at birth
workmen took rest here, next
to this tree, a hundred years ago;
their sweat still lingers in the air.
Down-river the bridge they built
still stands. the same names carved
in its railings as in their granite headstones
*
we heal, simply, our children,
like some kind of morality play. We
put leaves, like tiny boats, into cold water,
watch in mystery as they float away
like so many emigrants
*
we heal, simply, ourselves,
and in the silence near our death, we hear
our own hearts beating
as quietly as falling leaves |
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How I yearn to see the leaves
come out in spades again,
fleshy and plump with chlorophyll.
In my backyard, the soldiers are such:
1 lovely, sinewy birch budding
little clay-colored fists;
2 ruddy red maples, burgeoning;
3 dying oaks, stunted, rooted in netherland,
every so often creaking slightly
in wind to whisper, Am I still here?
4 delinquent scrubs, sloven but progressing;
and 6 buxom sugar-plum-fairy pines
holding out their flowing dresses
to block the neighbor’s view.
These gluttons wait to show off,
to dangle, seduce, tantalize,
play hide and seek with shadows,
wear their hearts on fingertips
and fill up with light.
It’s been such a long, godless winter,
all about desolation and war.
Dead everywhere,
flying on nimble wings.
The air thick with murder
cold curdling blood.
But this spring you won’t be alive
to watch our little green rebellion
strike victory, despite it all.
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If you were a tree today,
you would be red, massive and tall
I wouldn’t know the season of your shade,
or hear the bristling of your leaves;
Amidst the giants, you would startle me.
No, a tree you are not, but a woman, and still mine.
The truth is that you are living off the rings
that patterned your past, but the essence
is neither, wooden nor frightening, and
I still know the streams that feed you.
Was it the wind? Was it the ice
that crusted your bark,
insulating it from me?
If you were a tree today
I wouldn’t know the extent of your roots;
That measure of intimacy lost under the bare earth
I wouldn’t even see you, among the fallen ones.
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lattice branches
overlap and intersect
at every angle.
bare, wanting and waiting
for the right time
and right connection
for green flourishes.
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Oh, yes, the weather.
I know it bothers you,
but I try to change the subject
(as always) to something trivial,
like unemployment, or television,
because the dense gray clouds
press on my face like a pillow,
suffocating the spirit
that dreams of bright beaches,
silencing songs that seek the sun.
It doesn't help to wear Hawaiian shirts
or sprinkle pepper on popcorn,
and the ancestral northern European
solution: Drink – only tunes sadness
to unwritten symphonies, lines
of long faces along bars, butts on stools,
lips that move, repeating complaints
heard from parents – it's sure a cold one,
ja, even farmers may complain this spring!
With that, we laugh, empty the glass
down relaxed throats, and order rounds
to water these dry, barren branches,
killing eternity until inevitable light appears. |
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One has to wonder,
with such a display as this,
how deep the roots reach.
Turn it upside-down,
imagine the air as damp soil,
and one would have to admit
the roots run deep indeed.
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In the corner of our front yard there was
a giant Elm tree that our neighbor's son
died under.
Carefully, I'd look for the lightning's
mark, a wound, the secret
that explained why the old tree lived
when Dennis died.
Did his mother, Mrs. Demars, stand
at the kitchen window, rapping her fist
on the glass, saying, "No Dennis!
Didn't I tell you
Never stand under
a tree when there's lightning?"
Was she as thin as a daisy then?
Or did that come later, so that a
slight breeze was all
she needed to remove her
from this earth? |
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we could stand here like oaks-
bending our branches
to comb the earth's floor.
we could hold eachother-
fingers on wrists
our confessions felt through pulses.
we could stay here-
the east wind blowing our branches
persuade them into a delicate rubbing.
we will cause no real fire-
only anticipation burning.
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we're trees side by side
my limbs are frail
yours strong
you think because
i bend gentle
i'm weak
what you don't know
is my roots run deep
inner core healthy green
yours cling to loose soil
your limbs
grasp & choke light
you're about to topple over
& your gray trunk
is half cracked
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I want the tree to never peel off her red jacket
and the sky to never close his blue mouth.
I want to sit on the sea’s lap as she rocks
and hang the moon on a silver chain.
If only the flowers could speak
and the children, the innocence remained.
I want the swoosh in the canopy
and the summer breeze to lay its body over me.
I can see the tree, its naked branches shivering
waving, “Come back Spring!”
But don’t die like the tree, the children—everything.
Instead, come and sit awhile with me.
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A fifth season could be made of this hollowness
brought upon by parched temptation
which falls to disfavored wish.
A moratorium on reason!
Bitter wines are better’d to conscience
in this unattainable night
that harkens back, with regrets, to winter
and begs the coming of spring.
Alone within the choking claim of candles
on a night too haughty for shadows.
On pillows carved of sweet indifference
a fifth season could be made of the closing of my eyes.
Only the ability to have desire
is more frightening than the denial of desire.
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I once owned a tree
in the holy land
My certificate of title
bestowed on the occasion
of some childhood birthday
making me unwitting participant
in a campaign to reforest the desert
rebuild a nation
thousands of miles beyond ken.
In St. Paul, I owned
a young, beautiful maple spread out
before the second floor window
of my first home
filling its picture frame with hued magnificence
like stained glass, as if
to complement the cathedral ceilings.
In summer, I borrowed a hammock
stretched between two lakeshore trees.
Like leaves in a breeze
I swayed rhythmically
in its giving support
light as suspended air.
I rode through woods
on bridle paths familiar as the blue lines
rising across the backs of my hands
I came to know their seasons, their scents
the different sounds made
in wind, rain and muck.
I learned to spy hidden denizens
catching the reflexive twitch of their ears
with sweeping indirection
as I rode past.
I toured forests above Vancouver,
along the Sierra, in the Boundary Waters
each a homecoming where
endless refrains of trees carried
my heart to new planes of calm
as though hammocked in its canopy
where I could hear
amidst its silence
the flight of birds
the mystic rush of air
beneath each beat of wings.
I even returned in the frigid night
of winter, where the shadows cast by moon
obscured my leader, whose form
vanished among the surround
of indistinguishable tree trunks
leaving to the soles of my feet
the task transcendent
of finding unseen ruts in snow,
my only guide back to camp.
At home
my morning place
a bank of windows where
I prop my feet on the sill
looking out upon broad
uninterrupted swaths of
brush and cultured trees
half-dreaming still
of paradise.
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I was standing outside today when a widow-maker fell from
the triple oak across the street. I heard the crack when
branches hit pavement and it startled me.
Thankfully noone was under it when it fell.
Wind has been whipping trees all day and the forecast says
we might get the biggest winter storm of the season.
We haven’t had much snow all winter, but like typical Minnesota
our most fierce snowstorms are often nearer to Spring.
The most hellish storm on record was the year my mother
was born, in March, a fickle month.
I looked at my own oak tree, a small branch has been loosely
hooked up there for a couple of years now.
It’s a lot smaller than the one that fell across the street,
but it still makes me nervous because it could do some damage
if it ever hit someone on the head. I’m too small to reach it
even with an extension pole and I don’t climb trees anymore.
My memories echo the voice of my mother yelling “get down from
there before you break your neck.” A few years ago I was yelling
those same words at my son who took after me so much it scared me.
I was fearless then.. I suppose my fears grew along with the fragility
of my bones.
I was a climber until a few years ago when my left knee went bad.
I still walk and on a good day I run. I miss the crags of the
north-woods, and that feeling when I reached the top.
The only time I run anymore is if I’m angry or feeling trapped,
my legs have long been my method of escape and the chemicals
my body releases always improve my mood.
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From a grounded seed,
Many things to many alive.
Leaves for the finite. |
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SUGAR AND RUSTY
Sugar was a maple, thrusting out of the eastern crest of our bumpy north-facing lawn
Illuminated from above at night by the neighborhood streetlamp
She gazed in mocking humor upon the golf-course lawn across the street
So flat and perfect |
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Bare birch
waits for sun.
With unseen palette
I brush on greens and yellows,
sharp fingers and arms
slowly fill with light and life,
an osmosis of color
pulling through my roots.
Breathless,
hues drain from face,
tree inhales,
long release of breath... |
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