The Speech of Trees
By Barbara Siegel Carlson
The trees speak a language I haven’t learned,
I haven’t learned the route their shadows take.
Their shadows that take me alone,
alone in a body with no other shelter.
No shelter but shadows above and beneath,
beneath limbs that can’t grasp what is missing.
But the missing has given me longings,
relentless longings that come from a place,
a place beyond these trees out my window,
these trees out my window that never leave.
They never leave my days or my nights.
And the days and nights fill them with wind,
a wind so strong there is nothing else.
There is nothing else.
Copyright © 2021 by Barbara Siegel Carlson.