Pine


The ancient Chinese poets used
to carve their poems into pines
then disappear into the halo mist.
They would ride up to the rim
of mountains with mouths full of words,
each one a rock, a moon, or crow
swinging down onto craggy rock,
its claws' scratch loud against
the sounds of nothing else but breath.
There against the robin's egg blue
of the sky is where he imagined
the children might someday sit and overlook
the goliath of city or bent village.
Off in the distance the glass shore
of some frozen lake, the charm
of a windmill singing old tin.
What better voice for audiences
who climb the world to hear from
than the sturdy rock pine whose trunk
rises up from patches of paper snow
to instruct all there is to know?