ancient oak

When they cut a chunk of flesh   like a piece of pie

From my right breast   I understood   not that I had cancer

But that life could do    and had always done

What it would with me    as with the hundred’s years old tree

Clinging on an edge where the yard slips down to woods and wild.

It stands bent and wide outside the window where I write

Having always had    ever since we met    a wound    a gouge

Dark emptiness inside   where pearly fungus sometimes grows

And from through winter's cold the solemn owl cries.

 

On a limb beside the tree's dark cave   I hung a metal rope

Of sea glass and shells retrieved  twenty years ago from a cove

Along the Chesapeake.  Its  eastern sea-smoothed glass now catches light

As sun sets over mountains in the coastal west.

Winds of time have had their way     look with keener sight

Even metal can turn frail and break when comes the test.

 

 I am not deceived.

Everything alive on earth will die     

Both tree and I.

 

Be still and wait for what you cannot know

Thin green leaves arrive in spring    and rabbits

In a warren at the great oak's roots  give birth  and guard

Another generation as they grow   while squirrels hiding

In the  tree's  dark wound   watch and gather

Acorns when they fall    bury them in earth    safe from snow 

Until seeds put down roots   and new trees  grow.

    

 In the elemental core of everything  two sides meet

Beginning/End   +/-    an  electric charge 

Explodes into  this present world

The tendril of tomorrow  breaking through.

 

We cannot sustain our paper flesh

Rent and lit with lightning    Wind shakes our leaves

Our branches fly 

Stars hidden   gleaming  in our bones

Rise up and join the trillions in the sky.