examined its own rings like a farsighted proctologist? Would it recognize scars as memory, the tunneling tracks of bores, an endless winter of heaviness white on white

and again white; do the hammerings of woodpeckers continue to echo like an ache in its bark? Would the fat springs still overflow with green, swelling the air and challenging

its roots to go deeper, deeper still, filling and holding fast to the heavy damp earth.
Or would the small boy’s awkward axe its biting sting and sudden absence

hold fast? And what of the sun stalking across its limbs and leaves, pulling and pulsing and conspiring with the wind to topple while promising endlessness remain?

—
Richard Weaver resides in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. His publications include Crazy Horse, Vanderbilt Poetry Review, North American Review, Poetry, Black Warrior Review, 2River View, New England Review, and the ubiquitous elsewhere.