The Living Trunk

The soil remembers

every seed that fell

before my coming,

each root winding

through darkness

seeking water.

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My ancestors are minerals

now dissolved in loam;

their voices have become

the language trees speak

when wind moves through them,

asking where we go.

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Below the world of light

my roots drink sorrow.

They taste the salt

of every tear

the ground has swallowed.

Yet from this brine

they draw their strength to climb.

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For grief ferments

to something sweeter

given time.

The dead feed life,

and life feeds

what will bloom.

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Above, my branches reach

for what they cannot see,

some vast, impossible becoming.

My leaves turn toward a sun

they will never hold.

They want, they want, they want,

and wanting grows them.

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Each spring I split my bark

with green ambition.

Between these two directions

lives the trunk,

the present tense

where past and future marry.

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Here is where I learn

to bear the burden

of all I have lost

and all I may become.

The rings inside me

tell of drought and plenty.

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What grounds me

is what pulls me from the ground.

What holds me still

propels me toward the sky.

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I am the meeting place

of earth and air,

the living proof

that staying means to change,

that roots grow deeper

only so branches fly.