The nice thing about tree rings
is tomorrow they’ll curve
out of themselves, stay beneath
blossom or shoot off
into each other; they’ll grow
then gray into each other—
to delineate one from another
is like pulling at centipede grass:
you’ll pull up the entire lawn
or forest, leaving only skinfolds
of earthen mounds, carved-out
wrist story of Monster Slayer:
in a virgin creek, leg & thigh
of his mother soak
up the Sun. Immaculate
pulse of radiance & ripple
in her soon rounded
middle, jut out for (f)all—
longer than any concentric
season, dark and dry
circles reveal a tree split
open, what is found between
arm bones—a kind of sheet
music with all whole notes;
this is how rings sing
in the early morn, a choral
of cicadas sound come, come
as though they had wrists
to shake gourds at His coming.