More

 

There’s something more

It’s here

Inside the pale blue

Between the yellow light

And the branch’s skin

There is green, too,

Dark in the shadow

 

We can make it human

I suppose we always do

But there is another planet here,

A world whose talk

Is in the leaves

Whose senses know the light

And every color

Every texture,

Each thing that moves so that

Another thing might live—

It’s all cooperation

 

Learn from this

Don’t make it human yet;

It’s intimate already

It’s conscious because energy

Has wisdom

And gravity a story

 

The tree is a tale that moves

And also waits

So much to tell

More so than mute artifice

We should know this

And as we don’t

 

So wait!

All things are here

Enough for life, because it’s life

A history if

We could pull the sunbeams from the

Earth to read

We can’t for now

 

So listen, please

With all concrete senses

Best that we can do—

Please, listen

To the story that could save us

Every day,

If we don’t destroy

The binding and

The pages

Let ink run as blood from entropy,

Our self-made ruin

Of whole things,

Run into empty land

And lifeless water

 

Reclaimed by

An angry universe

Having expected

So much more

With all that had been given

Every word in nature

 

No wonder why

The angel kept, outside

Of paradise,

A flaming sword

Pressed by what’s inside

Ignited by protection of what’s true,

True stories, more

Than what we wrote

And what we wrote that we forget

 

Still having a last chance to hear

To receive

If only by the gateway,

A last chance to learn

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Erico Marcelino on Unsplash

The Wanaka Tree, New Zealand