When desperate for a name
I carved a poem on a birch tree
for all the world to see
cutting fast into the alban flesh
I watched it bleed around my words
steaming from the flaming knife
forged from lifelong thoughts and feelings
honed by ever-grinding passion
I engraved a blast of free-form prosody
deep beneath the papered bark
to imprint lines I had to write upon the stalwart core
but in my haste to make myself a famous man
with words as plentiful as leaves
I cut too far around the slender trunk
and fixed a girdle there of death
as if I were an executioner of trees

so when I knew the birch had died
I went back to meditate upon the grave
of what I had to say in life
but found the tree still there
a skeleton yet standing
vestigial of my act of God
I stood before that barren cross
to laugh and weep at what I had done
this son of man
for all his posturing on the podium of art
is simply but a monster at heart
like all the rest who savage trees
and other holy things

now when wind and fire and rain
have broken, burned, and buried her old bones
and snow has hid my crime beneath its innocence
like hair sheltering my sinful head
I will go again to where I carved that poem
kneel upon the frozen ground
and beg forgiveness from the spirits of the grove
if left by chance to spring the green
when all we images of God have quit the wood
gone to space in ships to find more pristine spheres
or left among the few remaining sapiens
to scratch a meager living out of bloody sand
and look for monumental stones
on which to carve new words