OAK

Frost covered skeletal arms,

hang low in resignation.

Unforgiving brittle bones of

my grandmother’s formidable oak

allows for the dominance of the sun to 

steal its glory.

Barren from bended bondage

bare leaves summon other lives,

to reconstruct their birthing.

Dampened warmth lies beneath the 

mossy surface soil of intertwining tendrils  

as the oak roots breathe a history.


Sixty, of your seventy-foot frame shadows

secrets that hide the ghosts of summer

where dreams and dying linger on. Time can 

be still and thick and transparent in the dark,

to a majestic and ripe 

symbolic shapeshifter. the veins in your leaves 

give away your truth. 

suspended by the heavy acorns that nurture

as the branches in this southern quake

arc the ground with the weight of human limbs.

my mother remembers the murderous sight.


frozen now. wounded by the icy corset that grips,

your frame is vulnerable and unassuming.

under the deep lies the future. underneath the deep

the past is surrendered.

Root and vein and water and blood

combine to declare the oak, a glorious

vision. 

Winter is the predator of the solstice

undermining the uncertainty of spring.