If and When I See You

If and when I see
You
You might be one of the trees
both straight and loping.
The tallest parts
of your California
limbs shake just
so slightly,
it sounds of paper
oceans and passing storms.
Eucalyptus!


But then I passed
The Sycamore,
and here I saw you again.
Susceptible skin
paired away
crackling
layers
on a
rouged
trunk.
Smiling.

What drove the
wrench in
though,
what cut to
the marrow
as you say
was the Giant Redwood,
always
slumbering
ever just so.

With a golden mind.
A diseased mind.

With slow amber words
that came in blazes,
You did
manage to
fold
us.

And it seemed to
take all the ages
before we could
have the
want to
see you again.

wanting
and terrified
and wonderful
in
a summer fog..

A twisted
frail necked
Cyprus
that belonged more to
what grew beyond the shore
than to the
untimely voices
of little ones.

On the land.

Raised and
sloped
and
slope

and slumber

and slumber

and rest.