In the State Forest

To Cath

The bones of winter in the wood,
Laid like skeletons on soft
Pine floor, boat shells stood
Beneath the silver luft

Of sail, the frizz of needles
Where, on finer days than these,
A small breeze gives, on days when, dangling
Down from tree tips hazy

In the sun, in the silicon
Of beach and copper sheen of skin,
Branches grow that lie here
Now like hair on any bathroom floor,

The season’s vertebra, or normal wear
And tear come to a natural end,
Curving up from earth like ribs
Of cattle, dinosaur, or men,

Bark stripped clean to limb,
Underlying evergreen
Pale as corpses on a lawn,
Wrists rising to the leaves and worn

To points of no return
Like vines to which the hand
Idly coils one too many turns:
Still, from the killing twists

Of March’s leeward wind,
Sheltered by the canopies’ highest
Bend, the roots take cover, grist,
And food, and, for the future’s sake,

Extend.

March 7th, 1986