I need no bibles guarantee of immortality.
I need simply to sit and see,
growing in the grotto
I cut in our woods,
a young maple tree, standing among other saplings
staring high into a grove of old oaks and maples,
some, eighty, ninety feet high.
Each following the air trail carved by a
genealogy of trees before them, going back and
back and back to when these hills were
mountains and these woods,first growth forests.
Each tree growing tall into the sky, then
bending in the wind, weary with the weight of winters,
holding early spring ice, bending, bending,
cracking under the strain of age, at last
crashing in one final sigh,
farewell to seasons, years, centuries,
to become the mulch, soil, womb for a maple sapling
growing in the grotto
I cut in our woods.