Once when the hurricane slammed the oak
to the ground
I walked stunned within its branches
elaborate with mistletoe
Girth sacrificed to its friend wind
Dignified even then
***
Oak:
“A garden and country”**
Father to perpetual fire
Channel of the gods and goddesses
Opening heaven’s crack
Last leaf never falling
I, in my green shirt,
put on my broad antlers
sure-footed, Druidic, lichen-dressed
A wizened-woodman
***
To entice the eye
into the mysteries of time and weather
I sprout leaves
***
The oak my father
Twig in winter
Bud in spring
Leaf in summer
Acorn in autumn
***
All that I am:
A woodpecker at dusk and dawn
on the white oak trunk
A cardinal flower at field’s edge reading cloud shadows
The cardinal points – every direction a good and purposeful one
Every oak an axis through earth’s center
***
Ah, the lacewing’s found the horn-of-plenty at the oak’s feet
***
***
Sometimes I think there are two of me
for my arms are so big I embrace so much
It just doesn't seem that I can be just one
But then One is what I am and
like being
as all the oaks are One Oak
as all rivers roar into One
***
I sit at my table counting
the times an acorn hit me
on the head
or the times I looked up straight
up into glinty leaf frissons
when the sun's brevity broke
through the multitude and
I, too, looked down at myself
"Green thought in a green shade"
***
The blue jay quarrelsome as
he is
has style
For this the oak befriended him
Together they made a forest
one
acorn
by
one