September 3, 2018What Happens in Church
for Robert Wilcox, 3/9/1939–11/29/2017
Another mudfunked Sunday, singletrack tripping
nine miles through the leafdeep and flat
fall light, not tumbling, somehow, over rocks
or roots, lungs sucking sweet oxygen
from the crystal, heart thundering red diatribes
the cardinals marry their carols to.
Your head is mostly empty, but your legs are full
of zoom, so you hurdle without thinking
the fallen body of a birch, which Saturday late
in a carnival of wind, gave up its forever bending
and finally went for broke. You have no idea
if it fell in a tirade of roots ripping, its knotted
torso torn from glacial till, or if slipping
from soil, it let go this earth with a satisfied sigh.
You know only that you’ll never speak
the language of softwoods. You’ll never ease
the grieving of worms. The mushrooms build
their bookshelves where birch bark used to be,
recite the natural histories with tongues
of rot and flame. Leaves float down in a ringing
of bells that only the salamanders can hear.
You pluck one from the breeze, hold it to your ear.
from #60 - Summer 2018