tree story #11: Hidden Oak

Tree Story #11: Hidden Oak

I need to clear a poem
around this oak, cut the old-growth
verbiage, leaf-fall and cedar
thickets, the deciduous vines
that twine about it,

and just have the oak’s view
overlooking river-canyon
that’s been eroding into bedrock
since before the acorn
of a tree.

But all I’ve got are words
describing this tree’s unexpected
branchings; how it nurtures
the woods’ dark that, in turn,
obscures it, suckling shadows,

always drawing back inside itself,
stubborn; refusing to be
my symbol. A storm-wind’s
breath from the highway,
it drops acorns of its poems.

Taylor Graham