Deciduous

(Picture found here)

After Les Murray

I am the seed that roots and spreads,

I am the underbough unbearing.

I am the meristem, the forest in refuge,

the division in moss and the division in fern.

I am the absence of sound in deep rise,

in snow-buried mound, in matter-of-fact serration,

the feeling of stillness, that widens

and widens, then rustles and spills

from forked tongue to tadpole-spitting stream.

I am boundlessness of now, when it

is good to bear nothing but the weight

of its great vastness, while winters

pass from absence to deafening gathering

to absence again, many re-births

and sprawling coverings, till the falling ahead

becomes the falling behind, and half

the short seasons of the day are sameness.

Widening pools cast my perpetual echo,

I am bark of skin dividing out,

I am winged vertebrate weaving,

I am cambium, the forest in refuge,

the division in fern the place

of meristem division.

~Tess Barry