(Originally published in "Ramifications" literary magazine, Fall 2020)
(Image by photochur, from Pixabay.)
1.
Wind-up frogs, wooden lungs
coiled taut, croak in clipped,
staccato crescendos,
highest notes snapping
off, twig-like, from the
dawn-dimmed heads
of longleaf pines,
whose needles tousle and fan
like the ruff of an owl,
wafting their prickling scent.
Submerged in silver ponds,
cloistered in high canopy,
the treefrogs sing.
As the branches glow with gray,
tinted by sleepy blue
sunlight, the trunks bend,
near-bald and tall, parceled
into brown diamonds,
leaning to whisper
frond-rustling rumors.
Their murmur is like a distant
stranger hidden in columns of conifer.
A voice, a zephyr in the treetops—
felt, but faceless.
2.
Each echo streams
from unseen source, a song
rolling underground,
where fungal filaments
web with white from piercing
tendrils, like static,
like muted thunder
shooting jasmonate and phosphorus
from root to root—
living language I long
to touch, but should
not grasp.
3.
In other forests,
draconic fires whirl
up the trunks, scarlet
on charcoal—splitting, digging
down, as though to rip out
the earth’s throat.
Let a spark of whispering filament
escape, hoarded deep,
untouched, in the ground.
Whatever hidden thunder
stirs the soil
to root and branch,
let a spark remain,
curling gold in charred humus
to nurse its embryonic glow.