Banyan Roots
for Frank and Susan
In this dark
the nervous roots are awake
tangling in blown air.
They distend, aching
toward sweet dirt,
sparely-
banyan fibres, hair
loosening
twisting again, fingers
roping around the trunk,
yearning out of the wrung sockets
where the bark
wrinkles a little.
In this dark
the tree's breath warms a wilderness beneath
spreads open, entirely tender,
and will find for the groping radicals
not yet
soft places in earth.