Syncarpia glomulifera (Turpentine Tree)

By Dimitra Harvey

You’ve grown straight up out of stone
on this slope of forest, this ledge

of what’s left. In spring, the climbing sun
rests on each rung of your branches. Once

people might have said gods roost in your hollows,
seen gods, like flickering veils, swarm

your stiff, ridged bark… I’ve seen
a black wing, a tail like a brass whip

slip into shadow up there, where light glitters
and gambols like a current, a changeable

tide. Sometimes at night, I hear the wind sighing
through your leaves as if in relief.

This poem is a public submission created for Red Room Poetry's New Shoots digital poetry anthology.