branches doubly thick
in white tops
and dark bark
Here one ends, no here begins
the frozen bits of the
winter dressing gown.

Why does the tree always
hide its size, in all weather
but sun-baked winter?

What conspiracy hides
the words written
in a language spoken
in month long moments;
hides the skeleton
in mist, spring growth, summer foliage
autumn's fall, wind's dance and
winter's covering?

Why have we words to describe
the workings of inner bits
of atoms not one in a
million will ever see?
Yet to describe the age long
webwork of branches,
budded, added, reaching?
reaching for what goal but
life, we say, for the sun
that slides by overhead in
light meals of such energy
that a thousand leaves join
their neighbors in a day long
dance.

To describe this what words
do we have? Fractual, curve,
line, break, empty space...
these cover so many things
that I forget
what the tree itself
looks like, although
it peers in at me
as I write words
to reveal its secrets.
Ha, I peer back at it
in a revenge well rewarded
when it calls a wind
to scratch at my window
in greeting.

If I could speak oak
or pine, yew, teak
or sapling screams,
what wisdoms could the world learn?
The value of always
growing, of
patience through cold days,
of stoic living
through years of
bearing young sapien
weight.  Of the values of
pruning, or the joy of
harnessing every breeze
for a chance to play
one's hair in flamboyant
creaks and cracks of
solid skin?

But my blood is thinner than
sap, and I move too quick
and am too impatient to
learn the language
of these oldest beings of
the world.  And so
they keep their secrets
of how the world was
when they were young,
and wishing for the language
of stones.