The Falling Trees



The trees were falling today
like sheaves of harvest wheat,
falling gently, to grace
the denitrogenized earth
with their centuries-old regenerated bark
encasing xylem and phloem.
They have no vocal cords, these trees
but their thumping trunks call through the depleted earth.

Mother heard and emerged,
her hair as fresh as newly-rained clover
twined with apple blossoms and woodbine;
her ivy eyes, patterned green marble,
scanned the felled trunks
and her womb throbbed
throbbed with the truncated lifebeat of
her effete offspring.
     As she passed, speaking her sorrow on the wind,
where her moss-and-spiderweb cloak brushed
the loosened needles, the corrupted leaves,
drops of clean bluefish water fell
from the cracked barks.

The water served as a catalyst
for their conversion into detritus
to fuse greenwood into the earth,
returning parenchyma and cellulose.



--jennifer crystal chien