Posts Tagged branch

Seeing long and short.

I told the pretty little hornbeam, forty years ago,
that little maple sapling will not bother you,
I’ll keep it lifted and away.
There’s room for both, I said.

IMG_20160102_142342779

The spruce looming at the bottom of the orchard was a seedling then,
its siblings all harvested for Christmas trees,
except one pine also grown too big for Christmas.
They’ve grown up entwined a quarter century since.

IMG_20160102_142004549_HDR

Good year for cones on the high branches.

IMG_20160102_142149922_HDR
The trees are transparent now
to the sky and the ridge across the valley
for half the year a solid mass of green.

IMG_20160102_141333919

See through down to the branch.

IMG_20160102_141553352

See right through the unending woods, almost.

IMG_20160102_141512090
In every quarter see the horizon of ridgetop and sky.

IMG_20160102_141350027

The leaves will be beautiful when they return.
But we’ll miss the long view through the silver trunks
just as much as we miss their dense green cloak.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Mississippi blooming.

 A little dirt, a little water, processed through a bulb: an emblem perfect on a stem.

2014-09-06_17-23-21_449

Lower, where the tree trunk reaches into the earth, a golden dirt bloom.

2014-09-02_19-16-21_453

Lichen shelves, ascending fairie ladder.

2014-09-06_17-09-15_747

Puff. Ball. Woodland antiseptic.

2014-09-06_17-10-31_880

Either the rock grows larger, using it’s fungal affiliates as we use our microbioma.
Or the branch wears away the bottom while the lichens eat the top.
The plastered leaf may stay, may wash away downstream.

2014-09-06_17-13-00_459Camera clicks convert the eddies to shining mirror rock, solid for the instant.

2014-09-06_17-13-39_262

Zooming out, the flow of the branch,
gentle today, going forever down.

2014-09-06_17-13-21_110

The mighty Mississippi waits, assured of what’s coming,
moves all its other work along and waits
as the Little Bald Branch runs into Spring Creek
down to the Pigeon River, down to the French Broad
pausing for the turbines at Lake Douglas, over the TVA spillway
at last to meet the Mississippi
riding down some more to New Orleans
into the Gulf of Mexico, tickling the frenulum of Florida
as it exits into the Atlantic
and sails the Gulf Stream north to the coast of Wales.

That’s it? Or sucked next under arctic ice,
pulled across and down into the deep currents of the Pacific?

Yeah, probably that.
Water like electrons will always go to ground.
The cycle unbroken.

Tags: , , , , , ,