"those great ignorant leafy ways"

the 2 trees/are opposed to each other
in the way of the mirror
this tree is his experience
beloved in the mirror/it is
turned & analyzed & dead
the raven's in the woman's flesh
the flesh that has decayed
but something endures in the pop song
in iowa the poetry chokes the lover
the leaves will/not fall
the unforced line decides its own pace
the pattern non-discernible is discerned
the donners picnic'ed below this cottonwood
the years are glass but silvered by
this vision/tamsen in the bough
turned to the white dry flesh, sweet
among the snow that winter of 1854
but this is January/the woman's flesh
is air in these eyes/in my hands/no taste
still that tree in the mirror/though
I went back to school

it's like the rubber bumps in a musicbox

The beginning of many poems about trees. Before this time in the late 70s I had resisted nature as a place I could not operate. I thought I was strictly a city boy, with a need for human, intellectual contact, above all else. Then I moved into the house on Washington Street across from Springfield High. There was an enormous cottonwood in the back yard that Greg Lakebrink told me was somewhere between 125 and 160 years old. Later I read that the Donner party had left Springfield from a site across the street from the present day location of Springfield High. This inspired me to think about trees and is the beginning of my tree worship. Now I am an out and out tree worshipper. I think it was to Ray Wiggers when he was editor for the Illinois State Museum that I first said that I felt that trees were the true dominant important species in the actual world. That would've been around 1994-95 somewere. When Kimberly and myself were married in 1999 a prayer to the trees was one of the important elements of the ceremony for both of us.