In response to Paul Brookes’ June prompts.

Dear trees, listen.

How could I choose a single tree,
of all the trees I know and love so well?

I cannot read the bark-runes, have no skill
to scratch in bird-steps the words a tree could read.

Poplars ivy-bound about,
willows hollowed and bowed, sentinel oaks,
the wild white-bloomed plum and apple,
walnut, spindle and blackthorns,
I hear you all when the wind blows,
listen to your counterpoint when the birds sing,
walk gently where saplings shoot,
and stand beneath green canopies that hold up the sky.
Do you even know I am here?

Perhaps a flag would do, a banner,
long as the horizontal clouds,
brush-painted in carmine and flame,
carried by geese and cormorants,
river-bound, ocean-bound.

Perhaps the wind would whisper
what you couldn’t read.