Why take a plane when you can pump
moisture up from the earth,
your trunk a highway to the leaves?
Or long for Kyoto in the spring
when you are busy with your own
flowers in the fabric of the sky?
And you, great oak at the end of the street,
breathing through millions of pores
to paint with your pollen, bruise with your shade,
how did you heal when lightning
tore through your bark, carving a wound?
Why didn’t you come crashing to the ground?
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 27, Issue 1.
Jennifer Barber’s most recent poetry collection is The Sliding Boat Our Bodies Made (The Word Works, 2022). Her poems have appeared widely in literary journals and magazines.
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