1. Calle Acacia

Cracks,
lines down and up and into saying –

how still the bark,

how quietly

Presumption

insists what ought to be there

is. The lines
move as though along a line like

As above, so below.

Hope conniving with the beggary
of foliage

to mark
the place where the sun gives up

and Time gives

rain.  

2. Realism

When you hear a tree

tell you it wants to be copied,
a demon or god

is telling you
not to neglect the material.

Lustrous eucalyptus
grain beneath the flaking; pine
scent of carpenters.

The giver of ebony
begets the velvet persimmon.

Now consider the shade:

the eaten
have left behind some feathers;

pearly dung
stippled with petioles
of heat.

What’s properly yours to do
as you sweat thought

is give nothing

to these slow raptures
calling, whichever tree calls. 

My thirst for sunlight
is a hard thing, one says.

Do not, says the tree, feign it.

3. Elm and Oak

Snow-
stripped trees,

made
uniform,

one as the other

made for winds
to fell.

Kinds of frozen torque

lift all
their dirt heavenward

— elm, oak,

leafless lines

cannot finally
supplant the saints

to prove
the stages of ascent

are darker.