VERY TREE

FORGET the tube of bark, Alliterative leaves, Tenacious like a hand Gnarled rootage in the dark Interior of land. Bright incidental bird Whose melody is fanned Among the bundled sheaves, Wild spool of the winding word, Reject: and let there be Only tree. Earth’s absolute arithmetic Of being is not in the flowering stick Filled with the sperm of sun, But in a figure seen By second eyes when we close Slow petals of the brain At evening like a rose. Colors pour in and out: Here is a timeless structure wrought Like the candelabrum of pure thought, Stripped of green root and leaf, Getting no seed to sprout, Yet lovely, lovely, God’s Very Tree, Form of whose intense inner life Abstractly branches to attain What glory, Tree, what pain?