HEMLOCK by Matthew R. Brown

In these bottomlands, air fetches coolness from the stream.

Here, where maples have gathered, the house of Hemlock kneels;

around them, beasts that have come seeking the fold of shepherd-oaks.  Kingly beeches, distant, will draw near, bringing gifts.

Hemlock rejoices in overarching limbs of larger trees; thrives in shadow, diminutive, liking to be dark green shade

of bright green forest.

It forms all its details--twigs, needles, cones--in fine miniature.

You have to hunt for it.  Its families are small.

It will never give its timber for a wall.

It will only be balm to your eye.

THERE IN THE WINDOW

by Matthew R. Brown

There in the window, under a bridge,

or sitting in a tree above a crowd

of people we see the man and the

woman that no one wants around.

In a rattling Studebaker they head

toward the hospital that will turn them

away for lack of insurance.  Later, the

child will be born in the back seat

and he will grab with his hands at

strips and dangles of fabric above him.

As with the eyes in the window

high above the street and the red

geranium and the man in the tree,

they will mostly fail to see how the

child's hands stretch and turn the

Mobius strips of atoms we inhabit.

THE HERMIT by Matthew R. Brown

"I have no real need of hacksaws,"

said the hermit, "Dynamite, or chisels,"

he went on, "To break free of any prison. 

If I would be consumed by Love;

If only I would be consumed by Love; 

then I would go as easily free

as smoke between the bars."

BARKS by Matthew R. Brown

You give me linden,

stringy crevasses;

cork ridges of oak,

burnished copper beech,

hornbeam:  lake waves

on a gray day.

Aspen green feeds me

when my leaves are down;

Birch binds my wounds; like sycamore

my darkness drops away in slabs

when the wind blows:

the colors of your brush revealed.

Like black cherry's parched ground

I step from plate to plate,

picking the path of my salvation

along your wilderness ways.

DEINDORFER WOODS

Light slants at gnarled maple, oak, and elm;

Snow sticks to branches, rock, and brick, and brass.

The trees look down on what is here, and gone.

These virgin giants watched, and waited long;

Antique solidity, storm-raggedness,

Catch, toss the light that slants at oak and elm.

Further back, semicircles of low ground,

Water, ice, thickets, evening stillness

Look out through trees on what is here, and gone.

They found fuel in the land; now there is none.

Oil scents, and derricks; shouts of men, all pass

Light slants at gnarled maple, oak and elm.

Now this wood is a cloister all its own,

Near houses, streets, and shops that grow like grass

The trees look down on what is here, and gone.

We live in time and change, but there lives One

Who knows our life outside the wilderness.

Light slants at gnarled maple, oak and elm;

The trees look down on what is here, and gone.

AS WITH NATHANAEL

Did you see me standing under the elm tree,

Hidden in a thicket of aspen?

Or looking up toward you through swaying

Oak branches, swans gliding, bright wisps

Of vapor whirling on the blue?

I am here looking to you but have no words;

Pray in me, please.

Take away my guile, find me without it.