A tree,
a man's hand resting on its trunk, alive,
hard-hammered, peened to a copper brawn,
veins like long-dead signatures.
The skin on the knuckle topographed with a history at rest;
the nails ripple-skeined, and each whorl riven
with the containment of summer and earth.
Gap a glimmer here, a breath,
and in the sun, the hour-blind sun,
that hand becomes a swarm of words
humming in her blister heat,
telling the tree 'we are but close'.
As intimate as that,
as the laying of a cheek upon a chest,
as lulling a tree to sleep.
Yet that hard hand, old brown root rogue
who should know better, keeps a pet wry tongue;
has lived in the cities of honey and seen, once or twice,
tenderness disrobed and the treachery of sleep;
thrums a finger on the bark, forming the well-worn arabesque
as his pliers twist the wire ever tighter. Job done.
His sun a chorus of bees
whose possession is a passionate gleam
never nearer.
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