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.