In some mysterious way
woods have never seemed to me
to be static things.
In physical terms,
I move through them;
yet in metaphysical ones,
they seem to move through me.
~ John Fowles
PLANTING A DOGWOOD
Tree, we take leave of you; you're on your own.
Put down your taproot with its probing hairs
that sluice the darkness and create unseen
the tree that mirrors you below the ground.
For when we plant a tree, two trees take root:
the one that lifts its leaves into the air,
and the inverted one that cleaves the soil
to find the runnel's sweet, dull silver trace
and spreads not up but down, each drop a leaf
in the eternal blackness of that sky.
The leaves you show uncurl like tiny fists
and bear small button blossoms, greenish white,
that quicken you. Now put your roots down deep;
draw light from shadow, break in on earth's sleep.
— Roy Scheele
from From the Ground Up, Lone Willow Press, Omaha, NE
Poetry Garden
