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Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
Sun and traffic - day economy.
Six a.m. drive to plywood mill. Too tired
to be angry. Each day a step
toward death. What is being accomplished? The
small satisfactions
within each day. Book consciously read.
And frustrations. Package dropped, honey jar broke.

One of 175 soil types. With the fifty
tree species
comprising the canopy under which Eric and Lisa clean
      their baby's face.

Sun in winter, old apples.

Inside the school
a brilliant but rebellious history teacher
is suspended by the school board.
200 students
wearing armbands and painted teardrops
protest. Another 400
are silent.

Within each structure
human dramas and routines.
Nancy will not love
any man who cannot do as many push-ups as she.

Trees grow,
porcupine **** in snow.

No job,
no niche,
no existence.
How you earn money is who you are. You are
what you do to get food to eat
and shelter from the winter, summer heat.

Each morning I seek God
by holding still
waiting for the smoke to be black or white
coins heads or tails
wind dark or bright.

Flock of evening grosbeaks
nipping maple buds:
the sign I need.

                   --------------------------------------

Less need =
more wealth.
2/23/89. So much equipment just to sleep.
More than a bare floor.
Plumbing vs.
wash at stream, find a log in woods.
Implements of human existence
unlike the deer or bear who
nip buds, forage berries.
I cannot eat the gum out of balsam fir
or bark from a popple.

I am not Wendell Berry
with a wife, a farm, philosophy.
I like the accuracy
of counting pear thrips in maple buds.
8/bud = complete defoliation.
This insect has four wings fringed with hairs
and is minute, 2.5 millimeters.
Two species within the genus:
one with tubular abdominal segment,
the other with conical abdominal segment.
Sugar maple their preferred food.

All I need
are names.
Names and habitats.
Elements, products, decay fungi, egg masses.
Marriage, copulation, regeneration, education.
Machinery, accounting, hand tools, laboratory.
I need your names
and histories.
****** histories, books read, imaginings, unrequited loves,
      significant landscapes, broken bones, periods of boredom,
      favorite shows.

                   --------------------------------------

Immediately means
without mediation, intermediate moments
time in the middle.

Time in the middle
time in the middle.
I'm bummed I never saw a dinosaur, an ice age, a cave man,
      even missed the last world war.
Thanks to paleontology, geology, archaeology, history
mind equipped to take
time out of the middle.
It's in our DNA!

Why should she love me, her tenant?
Because I pay the rent on time.

                   --------------------------------------

Excellent. The white sun rose
and lit the frost.
Early February, late March, or in between.
Birds begin
discussing family. Sap starts to flow.
Where the borer spirals in, it comes out wet.
Birch or maple.

I watched from the window. Beautiful
but no desire to go out and touch
swelling buds of elderberry.
Is this shrub crazy? It knows what it knows
with elderberry knowledge.

Come Spring, so much to identify and name.
Insects, diseases and new flowers.
Lepidoptera, root rot, the pinks.
I think I might get married too
and watch the moons pass through the mists.

                   --------------------------------------

March rain.

Some snow remains
roads dangerous
but truck deliveries must be made.
                                                           ­ The light
pushing back the dark.
Bark
getting softer, slippery
at the cambium. Sap
simmering. Summer
and spring are here and there
although only winter birds are in the air.
Some buds
break swell
want
to turn inside out
but wait
knowing better.

I too will not break or run
early
hold hope bound by ropes of discipline, experience
time the magic moments to come
take the last sleet and pain
slap in the face
glad for predictable seasons.
                                                 We anticipate however
drought, maple defoliation, increased gypsy moth infestations
which some attribute to our existence.
That may be true.
Or it may be that the universe
has reversed its decision on us
and there's nothing we can do.
But we will do
what we can
and some things we shouldn't
because that is human.

Continuing
into the space inside me
unconnected to the light switch, plumbing
fairly independent of materials beyond
food and sound.
Where I pray
like an oak
that the light will enter me
unbroken, forever
and I will live the meanings in the wind.
                                                           ­          Basic
necessities, wood
wine
and friends. And
the names
of everything
by which we know our way.
www.ronnowpoetry.com
Commuter Poet Aug 2016
Above the rock
Land and sea
Beneath the rock
Molten rock

Beneath molten rock
Liquid nickel and iron
Beneath the liquid
Solid

Behind each word
Is meaning
Behind each sentence
Purpose
What are you saying to me?
What is your desire, your purpose?

Beneath the bark
Is cambium
The cortex
The phloem primary,secondary

The vascular cambium
Xylem
Secondary,primary
Then the pith

Behind each vibration
Is energy
Beneath our skins
Is flesh and bone
Beneath our clothing
We are animals
What are we saying
To the world?
17th August 2016
David Barr Apr 2015
Wrap my slithering soul in layers of wanton and historical bark, where dendrochronology branches her gorgeously captivating system of vascular cambium and seals me within the vice of her vengeful caress.
History has truly borne witness to the brigand of robbers who interfered with travellers in the depths of the forest of aristocratic whoredom.
I am buried underneath chords of feminine expression, where the synthesis of bass, melody and harmony unite into an unspeakable realm which cannot be interrupted by parallel expressions of sterility.
Your carriage awaits, Madame.
Joshua Quinones Nov 2011
Impartial to the frigid air,
We pallid cherry blossoms bear
A dreary warmth on dismal days
And Romeo on passing by
Will pause to comb his matted frays
Of toil under lidded sky
And smile as our sleeping sways
Become his absent lover’s hair.

And Juliet with windswept eyes,
While taking linens in to dry
Will hesitate to swallow deep
The tonic of restoring will
That raining wraiths for hours steep
With spices of a lonesome chill,
But we who taint the brew shall keep
Her pines of He in vast supply.

But Year by Time is seasoned strong
And autumn mutes the swallow’s song
And winter chokes the poignant flow
Of beauty from our cotton breast
And when the dawn forgets to glow—
In cambium we sleep repressed—
Depart the fickle Romeo
Who fails to tote his heart along.
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
The only problem with 'Moonstruck'
is Cosmo's moon could never be so large in winter,
stand for luck.

Mid-winter sledding brought joy
snow, speed, although the kids were beautiful
none were boys.

Walking the boundaries, and the old field
boundaries. Aged maples, barbed wire
past the cambium.

Northern hardwood all the way, except
less than an acre scotch pine plantation
and a few primeval spruce.

Pendant spruce cones in tree tops
colonizing the old field too. Conifers
a primitive civilization.

Lyonia has red, scaleless buds.
Shrub or small tree, maximum height 12 feet.
It's a heath, Ericaceae.

Small, white, bell-like flowers become
seamed capsules, similar to but smaller than
laurel, Kalmia.

The buds had me thinking red chokeberry,
Rosaceae, but of course the fruit
was completely wrong for a rose.

A timber stand improvement now
in the scotch pine would encourage tall
even straight trees, a cathedral.

The maples on the upper rocky slopes
where the skidders couldn't or wouldn't go
are impressive as eagles', hawks' nests.

Mid-summer, Spiraea, field of pink flowers
fully encircled by mountain ranges.
Bees working them.

Nancy, the broker, coming at five.
These 160 acres, a dream, are unnecessary.
Offer 500 dollars per acre.

Not an investment, a sanctuary.
Backed against the Taconic ridge,
real moon rising.
www.ronnowpoetry.com
Ken Pepiton Jan 2022
Rich in time, at the distant shore
of Stix, laughing with the ferry men
and pall bearers, all retired, the gig is up.

There never was a Santa Claus,
and there never was a hell… that is,
an everlasting grief for failure to know
what no authorities allowed known,
even grown to full stature,
the things we agree
1798 was for some reason, poetically
important
now 2022

I hear Cordelia. What? "nothing, my lord."

With graven mudpies,
patty-caking clay and straw, straw
another story creature, or
character, entity, yes, an ity-ness
some being, whether operator or
operand, all opera is
some minds presenting das gestalt,
nicht whar?
A we.
Heavy, cold molasses heavy, very
worthy, measured weight, shipped,
dripped,
sent, in hope, one day,
the effect of a message in a bottle,
occurs, as any reader
sees another knowing for a reason,
hidden
upto, perhaps a true 151st preposition
aiming at an upper limit,

How high can mind go after body,
augmented with nets of ordered signals,

is laid to rest, in my future, all the books
I never wrote, drip from my fingers, I am
the trained brained qwerty and morse guy.

Ghee of Auvergne. But for the e, I remembered,
though you may know now this is after
I paid effectual prayer through AI,
to ality of Rheality, all the knowledge in the tree,

in the nut, that falls to the ground and grows,
morpheus, makes it symbolic as hell
and the eucharist hoc es pokemonic -****!
you're a scannable canticle cannibals' cambial
allusion .
cambium (n.)
1670s in botany,
"layer of tissue between the wood and the bark,"
from Late Latin cambium "exchange,"
from Latin cambiare "change" (see change (v.)).

From <https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=cambial>


Are we under your skin, slow think, we
is who
we are thinking. Let ter by letter stepping on

the compliants subsurface, softer than sand,
that cave - null arbor, tree of null-ity
annul - ah, "to make to nothing,"
that fine a dust,
a locale thought, linked, in a beautiful way
I may show you some day, these silken threads
that tie me to a wombed man,
in the land down under,
distant thunder, no sense of doom, this is happy
summer rain,
come to settle dust and fill all the puddles and ponds,
wells and cisterns,
gullies and wadis and broad sandy beaches,
visible from space,
any augmented eye may see, we live
on the wreck of a world.

One shell told Ben Franklin that, he said
that to many sons, many sons,
has Father Ben, the Humanist,

I insist, a hume-man ist, a human being
sapient, the action in the term sapience,
using that, knowing
I am thinking in terms any who read may define,
sift to the essential Eu-clade, literal
silence in time stop state, patient waiting if this
is why I live,
something I may have done, I did to dare the liar
smite me, many's the time,
cliché click heels snap

I salute my double mind minions, characters
set in array, as suits in a soap opera rich guy's
closet, close, close
always be
closing, set, the scene then changes and now
matters
- was Plato a big blue ox?
Why were poets banished? Truly, we are dealing
in common knowledge now, the sheet let down
from heaven, pick and choose,
you cannot or can not, wrestle with God,
and walk away,
without a limp.

Distillery stories, lotta sittin' around, drinkin'
spirits from former years,
we was young and in heat of the moment, tuned
to TV news, because we could know, what was
goin' on, after reality included knowledge
of fusion energy in seventh grade science,
right, when confusion was a word in spell-
ing bees, hmmm
ding
weedy insights, like first grass in fields burned
last fall, tender shoots for tiny kids and lambs
and calves and colts, and coyotes and squirrels
and cotton tails, and quails.

How rich are we?
TS Garrett Feb 2017
to the root I set my sight

to know the future

I must know the past

and of the earth is the origin

my first embrace must be the tree

where rugged bark shields softness

guarded from extremes

thrown by the world

just inside cambium hides delicate

whose cells are of two worlds

both bark and inner wood

both dark and ethereal at once

I must come to love the sapwood

nourishing the whole system

like ventricles offering out blood

here I come to know the heartwood

as the soul of the entity

although at it’s core

there is fabric death

this death is the strength

serendipity structure centered

a million fibers of cellulose

glued together

lignen bonding the wide

branches of the family
Universe Poems Aug 2021
Upon the bark,
cracks were open,
and, absorbed,
all passing depart
Crumbling cracked wood,
each piece retaining,
a woodland wild moon,
Theatre performances,
theatre of history, people,
love and, peace
Remaining auras,
that have floated through,
and, surrounds,
the crumbly,
cracking wood too
Sitting on tree bark,
It's telling you,
the wood beneath you,
hears and, feels,
while painting,
and, reviewing
natural art,
kept sealed in layers,
of the tree bark


© 2021 Carol Natasha Diviney
Death speaking in tongues,
As a flame of fire tongue
Waiting like a waiter to receive the glory of shame through men
For they act like hen
What will I gain gain from this question WHEN?
Where every huddles of beast has turned to a gist

I respect the voice of the wilderness,
For the desert has wildered away in my twinkle like a disappearance star
Waiting to see the moon in no avail of its angle
Calling the angEL of angLE
To stand for me in the darkest path
Pushing me away from the rocky parts

The big eye is at its centre of equilibrium
Having its measurement at the pendulum of the cambium
Recording the result as insult
For the innovations has turned to renovations
For I know I have a salvation that will take me to the sanctuary
The pad has turned to bad
For the hope is now in between the spoke of a bicycle

Reason me ohhh God
For my people are now dog
Trying to dodge from the dirge of the succors
Belittling the scorpion as a tiny beast of the breast
That will rest in the chest of the heavenly bed…
The pad has turned to bad
For the hope is now in between the spoke of a bicycle
john Shelton Jun 2019
I feel trees come out of the base of each spinal column,
When I creek in the morning a thousand nesting birds sing for my arrival,
my vascular cambium fillls its lungs with life and breathes it out too,
my only hope is that fire comes and clears the understory for my seeds.
its kinda weird. idk how I feel about this yet. at first it seems like I wanna make a poem about the missing piece of ecology in my region. but the more I think about it, it feels like I have been more privileged than I originally thought.

— The End —