October 2020
Author's Note: The tree poem resulted from 25 trees we had to take down for fire safety to the tune of 7 thousand
and the insurance company still raised our rates. Insurance in CA is becoming terribly high, barely affordable due to the many
fires here. We live on six acres in a forest of oaks and ponderosa pines. We have solitude and beauty here. My poems are driven
by what touches me.
Between Water
He remembers minnows
threading his toes,
passages in the water
where submerged worlds
of algae, gothic crabs, shadows
of his own sun-bright body
pressed onto the lakebed.
He resurfaces into how
he and his lover stood knee deep
in the lower falls of the lake’s dam,
the graceful civility
grown by those
accustomed to one another.
Years later, he hopes to pull
the horizontal days down
to where they began;
her face between his palms,
sunshine splintering off their shoulders,
water working its way between them.
Tree Burial
Already my bones are breaking for our trees—how
they drop, their branches ripped free—
enormous thuds ponderosas make as they’re felled—Already
there’s an empty space where they once stood,
warriors of the sky, comforter to birds, escalator to squirrels
Already my temperature rises with loss of their granular shade—
gone, the music they made in strong winds, the gentle
pluck across pine-needle cords, the swish
that lulls me to sleep —O, my friends of the sky
you will be missed,
and the owl who made its home in the crux of your limbs will ask Who
©2020 Dianna MacKinnon Henning
Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the
author (email address above) to tell him or her. You might say what it is about the poem that moves you. Writing to the author is the beginning of community at Verse Virtual.
It is very important. -FF