THE PINE SPEAKS the pine in my back yard still speaks to me with a voice for their every year of life they've seen three thousand four hundred seventy something voices said in sacred symphony to a younger me “sure your independence makes you free but free much like living more than a century overgrows easily into lonely I foresee people are temporary but here I'll be grounded in eternity come climb to find your crown in mine let my limbs bow to fill your empty let me let you see the broader picture perched high with birds and squirrels and vines you all thrive on me learn the timeless history recorded mysteriously in the writing on me runes from unknown days and dawns to come tattooed on bark and brambled locks of lustlost lovers fallen too far they flee! through my reaching roots searching dirt for ways to breathe see to be a tree is just to trust that those who need me will nurture me reciprocally “so how dare you desecrate me to build your tree house I can't leave I can't flee yet you drove nails into vulnerable me track marks from missed vein IVs betray the sanctity you tapped from me I am a tree! that is a fallen fameless dejected deity outliving outdated celebrity all around and still unseen due to the difference of my animacy only when you disembody me am I worthy worth merely my utility to you since parts sell more conveniently than the whole body “holy tree” becomes “pretty wood” why don't more people weep for me? for I inhale human vanity so clouds may downpour divine femininity I am the spirit and the form of old life in me waiting to be reborn but your church slaughtered this pagan thought and the obvious irony is that your cross is treewrought your homes sewn of my sinew and bone I make this world and let you be yet still you dare crucify me this pine tree who precedes your misguided ephemerality” sometimes often actually in this spiritless city I find the only language left to me with any kind of fluency is that of the back yard pine tree