White Oaks Ascending
by Stanley Plumly
In the mind-weave,
at a thousand, ten
thousand feet, they all
lean in on one another,
snowy, hollow, still
gothic with winter.
and the few torn leaves
starved neutral back
into the spring before
this one, the one long since
gone black under the ice,
hold on, mark time–
they’ll fall eventually,
once, twice, and
turn dark green again,
slowly, in detail.
And the few songbirds,
with their clear glass eyes
and heartbreaking voices,
stationed out of sight
in the high, cold crowns–
they’ll sing true again,
and fly and fall to earth
awhile among the human.
And this is promised
too, that the wind left
trapped in the blue
alleys of the branches
will climb and clarify
in the still and risen air.
Let the stone gods
in their fountains
turn like clockwork–
they’re no less rooted
in the rain, nor their marble
less perfection of the snow–
let the clay gods circle
in the fire. The body
piecemeal falls away;
the spirit, in the privacy
of dark, sheds all its leaves.
I died, I climbed a tree, I sang.
You can find this in Poems About Trees.
