Lone Haw

If the poem is what’s lost
From prose or verse moved tongue
To tongue, frost-bit, the poem

Is what’s found on the hill
In a field of wild grass,
Last tree left of old woods

Or first tree of the next,
Night’s glow on a bare branch.
Oh, you might not like that,

Too trite, poem as a tree—
Your poems are cauled in fire
And lit with blood, the core

Of what skulls seem to mean.
But can your fence with thorns
Clap its leaves like moth wings?