READER OF RINGS

When a maple is fifty-five

It has enough seasoning to speak

The wisdom of what more than twenty thousand days

Has taught her on forest lawn

Under nature’s knuckle sapping ruler.

A reader of rings can judge by spiral of lessons

Sorting out lush from lean

Years of her knowing—diary of days in cellulose.

“From the core of the slab beginning after root

Each year a ring-bound journal photosensitized

Circumnavigation of seasons—she grew undisturbed.

A child laughs in the meadow—larks in green leaves.

From fourteen to twenty-one she was holding on.

See how her rings are tight as a closed bible.

This twenty-fifth ring was a wet year and cool.

It is uniform, thick—well defined as a wedding band.

She was wet as a new bride and the earth was her lover.

Here where the rings are to close to call

She was dropping her leaves early and late out to spring—

A cycle of cold winters, arid summers,

Domestic quarrels with the debt collector on her step—

From twenty-six to thirty-four she fought the raven

Listened to the Owl. Each year a little growth.

Then steady in her state she went to middle age

Grown accustomed to the sap taps through her trunk.

And here, the last ring before her execution,

She was in good health and probably stood sixty feet.

The swath her limbs out sixty feet as well,

And her roots into the ground at least four times that.

Imagine the creature of her canopy before the snarl.”

©2000 Dan Kantak