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Slim pickings out here in The Black Wood,

Hitchhiking bird shit, parachuting

Twice as slow as they are strong,

A signpost offers every direction

To the crotched breast of an Oak tree.

A root structure older than each other,

Apportioned light and a skeleton together.

Tendrils of iron pipe, tentacles of muscle, estuaries of eras.

Every fissure, a mission. Wound and wounded.

Holding your own greedy fingers.

Through burrs and knots into nooks and folds,

Sitting pretty in the canopy alcove, upright.

They’re a damn good climber,

Here’s a leg up to the sunlight.

I can be a seed too sometimes,

I put pieces of myself everywhere.

Each malignant growth is a hold,

Each deviance, a new opportunity.

A five finger clasp around yours

Repulsive, intimate, I avert my eyes to you.

Something so out of the ordinary it feels uneasy.

Only here for those who look to see.

I count your rings, lose, and start over.

One seed born and another that found you.

Greater than the sum of your parts,

A folded page, twice as strong.

The parent of us grows outside,

The clasp and snarls of injured bark

Pen knife love heart initials inside.

The divine unexplained, the absolute lack of sense.

You elephantine pervert.

Cutting bits and sticking them back together.

Bearing byproduct fruit of the two;

Golden and delicious.

Cleft and wedge, whip and tongue,

I love to see how you’ve grown.

This is our Twofold tree,

We’ve done this before you know (before you knew)

Knowing that to become one is to be two.

Student surgeons learn from tree grafts,

I think about the word transplant.

Trans plant.