Tree for the Forest
Century Tree, St. Louis, MO
“Tree for the Forest”
[Not water but memories of water] nested concentric,
one to another, accumulated. History is
both the quick injury that broke a young limb and the seasons
[of water/ no water] that shroud it. No one alive remembers
the sapling but its pattern persists; none think of Missouri as three-fifths
an honorable state, yet it’s recorded deep in our tree(s):
the stoutest branch just out of reach still has some-
thing of a notch on top, [water/no water] rippling scars
uneven where rope sheared the bark, the forest
themed full of such singular marks. Don’t be fooled by the light
in the spring leaves; their color will be red again
soon, [when water is/ not water].
Peregrine
“Peregrine”
The sharp angle of an elbow in feathers
against bright, cold blue
can only be a spirit, unappeased
and peregrine, widely ranged already
but keeping her wings fully fingered,
to know the particles of coal ash
and woodsmoke escaped from electric
plants and hearthstones, to know
the crystals of ice born around them,
a dirty snow, all of it a dissipation
to be ridden as it is, the sun
a cold light, the moon dissolving
in it, blue craters of day
brushed by the feathers of her
eyelashes, the idea of an eye
dusting the moon, motes disturbed
and re-silted in a growing
delta, a new country.
(italics from T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets)