After-time of rot and strip and timber

Latent for years

Between rhythm and harmony.

Stems and roots and buds of it held dry and heavy.

All that easy growth packed-in

to safe and silent darkness.

//

and would it have stayed unmoved until time took will from that knot?

So even when the pacific plumed over,

That-

once bright and green and wet,

would not break to the second cotyledon stretch?

//

But an earlier rain softened the bristled hills

They stumble out over the streaming,

blinking in forgotten light-

To depth and width and breath

//

Roots find the old decay and plumb it, cautious –

death remembered in fibers

The highest leaves shy the summits

tamper the impulse to ascend

//

And so it shifts us,

the lost,

in the widening of our age.