Afternoon: we lie here on our backs
In sunlight heavy enough to break
through dense wheels of upper branches
and fall down the moody redwood trunks.
(When will we kiss? Will we?) Dark
needles
under our bodies;
ferns, as soft as they, green
as sun
upon the burned out black
charcoal caves in the trees.
(Our arms lie close, but our hands do not touch--
each
a separate body.)
The massive, ravaged bodies of the trees
make a circle.
Is this a temple?
(Is this
why we do not kiss?)
God-rooted in love
limned in this evergreen grove,
I stare upward, where sunlight is spitted
gold on charred sticks.
I raise both arms
together, straight along the steep lines
of the trees'
tough muscles, feeling my self into them.
And those dread, immense lives
seize
mine
into their double selves.
I harden tall. I have risen
a shaft of amber
in a red forest circle
where the brilliant spill of sunlight is allayed
as my boughs turn gently and spread
to bear new seed cones
in shaded places.
We will not kiss.
The redwoods circle us.
We have grown roots and branches of their peace.