So Fond of a Mere Name

What takes root in this space,
It moves all day and night.
If your eyes are too slow
Or your thoughts are too quick,
You’ll miss it. The roots slip
Through dark wells of pale spores

To seek out help, to read
The soil. At each root’s tip,
A hard group of cells push
And turn dirt as they die,
The old words, the small words,
The ones that dig down first,

While the long, thin wired lines
Of signs that mean and swap
Thoughts on the facts of things
Trail them, the way routes trail
The hard beasts that crashed through
The brush. All this is one

Tree, should be seen as ground
Tree, the match of branched tree
With the sky in its leaves.
The ground tree’s search sinks deep,
For food, for trade, for grip
That the branched tree can’t quit

In the next storm’s big winds.
It’s the branched tree that wants
To flee; the ground tree wants
To stay and feed. It’s one
With the mold and the dirt.
It talks for all its worth,

While the great, branched tree moans
In the breeze, shakes its leaves,
And stays a threat to rip
Loose from all of this clutched
In the great, ground tree’s fist.
Now, what’s the name for this?