Again,
the grind
and grumble
of saw and blade
disturb.
Air parts,
earth trembles;
Bark,
phloem,
cambium,
sapwood,
heartwood —
bitten,
pierced
and chewed
in joyless
hunger.
Sentinel Maples
or Evergreen Guard,
Merriam or
Addis Oak,
Hickory
or Treebeard –
When next I walk,
whose absence
will
I mark?
— C.Birde, 2/17
Winter wind
and
light,
strained through
needle
and
compact cone,
bear
the Ocean’s
breath.
— C.Birde, 2/17
Venerable Red Oak,
left undisturbed,
allowed
space and time
to stretch roots,
limbs,
trunk,
to grow
old.
— C.Birde, 1/17
I came upon them
while they linked limbs
in graceful ascension —
the Four Sisters,
patiently summoning
Winter Solstice
light.
— C.Birde, 12/16
Limbs stretched,
pinned to luminous
late-Autumn sky,
He offers no complaint.
— C.Birde, 12/16
Always,
always in motion;
even those rare moments
we remember
to pause…
— C.Birde, 11/16
She is loveliest
the moment
before
she
fades.
— C.Birde, 10/16
Thresholds
and doorways spied
from the corner
of one’s eye —
step off the long-trod path
into the arms
of
Autumn.
— C.Birde, 10/16
A lifetime ago,
crouched together
in the graveled drive,
swathed within
the hickory’s mutable shade,
we small creatures gathered
that straight-torsoed tree’s
green-hulled spheres.
Flesh rusted
beneath nails’ crescents,
we peeled and prized,
released the small,
smooth spheroids within.
With teeth,
with stones clutched
and knuckled,
we shattered
the inner carapaces,
picked
crenelated chambers
free of sweet nut meat
to eat
and left behind
haphazard patterns
of heaped
discarded shells.
The hickory was felled
half a lifetime later,
for raining nuts on
the car parked below.
And my small creature’s heart,
nested within the adult’s,
fissured,
broke.
— C.Birde, 10/16
Amongst the verticality of trees
— their communal and elemental truth —
there is solace.
— C.Birde, 9/16
