6/5/2016

​no tree grows straight it's true not even those mathematical pines that rise like beams

and hold the sky at ninety degrees, all trees twist like corkscrews as they grow

wound like wrung bedsheets the spiral often too subtle for the jackleg mortal eye 

each and every one no matter the species turns itself tightly into the air

with a kundolini spin or perhaps perception you lie and it is only the universe which turns

and the trees, our tall and quiet neighbors simply shift to face it, observant as sunflowers 

tracking the sun. no matter for us humans, who burn and plant and nail board to board but 

sometimes I see it in their lengthy dead after the bark has been shorn by buck-toothed beetles

the imprint of time, a muscular spiral, a turntable upon which the needle of creation scratched

round and round the xylem bones and I think how shortly we the people live how

few turns the circling sun promises us how we pirouette once twice thrice before the eternal

dancer lets go our tiny hands.
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