A FOREST Poem by Ester Naomi Perquin

What you can do is plant a tree in fresh-turned earth, see branches
reaching for the sky. The sun. The moon. The sky that you
once cursed. Bury a summer's day. Look through time.

Stand under the tree when the wind gets up, knowing where words fail.
Where hands are not enough. Thinking. Watering the trees.
Seeing trunks slowly thicken as life blossoms a way out.

The leaves that come again each spring and fall in autumn. How little stands
the test of time. How much. Under the bark the years of absence circle,
ring after ring of rooms, cleared out in rage or preserved intact,
remembered thoughts, the smile, the stories.

What you know: below the surface a tangle of runners and threads grows,
forming a network from the slightest signals, feeling its way, touching -
unseen we cling to each other, merging together.

That's all there is. It is everything. The sun dangles from the branches,
the moon. All the trees bear names. And grow. They grow.
From crown to root they tremble with existence.