Tree Bones

It’s rare you get to see them
These days—oh, wood, sure, stacked logs,
Cords of splits for camps and stoves,
Planks like stacks of sticks for homes,
Small twigs, drift kitsch, big carved stumps—

You might know of an old log
Or spot a branch downed by storms—
But a whole, neat, picked-clean set
Of white-grey tree bones, a ring
Strewn on dark moss and black stones?

Six heaps down near this cliff’s base
That I can count from its edge.
They’re quite like the bones of beasts
When they’re left to bleach like this
In a dry land of harsh storms—

Like the bones found in our graves
Or what the wolves leave of deer.
They seem to caul a faint glow
On the roots of the live pines
Rich with life’s thick, bronzed-green shades.

I know they’re all linked. I know
We’re all linked as well, to them,
To all of it. “I am that,”
As they say. But there’s a draw
On thought, to see them this way,

As lives that were once their own—
Yes, linked, yes, bound to go on
Through the next lives and the next
Grown from the bones of their days—
But each, too, one, where it rests.