My grandfather is telling them of the trees,
how they come into this world
like tongues of fire,
ready to consume and eclipse,
subsume, enrich and destroy
all things with their raw and
painful covetousness.
Then the drums, though,
and the howling of the wind,
that very same
wind
who has taken his sister tonight.
My grandfather is telling them of the trees,
and I listen
to the sound of his voice
like the ticking of a clock
in rebellion of itself,
like the roaring of a river
I hear in the distance
as I forage through the mountains,
trying
to glimpse him through the many trees,
that man whom wisdom has so extolled
as to render him
impossible.
03/03/2017
Richmond