Nurse-logs

We grow bold now
hemlock-poets all in rows,
our tender roots in the sweet
embrace of rich decay.
Our loving nurse-logs:
Shakespeare, Blake and Wordsworth
Yeats, Williams, Stafford and all the other
old-growth giants pulling sunlight after them
in their turn to the mossy forest floor.
Their thundering falls opening up the canopy
and in the cathedral silence,
room for our new songs, sunshine
for our little borrowed words.


K.A.WOOD
2004