felled: autumn wind west south west

felled: autumn wind west south-west

If this wind were home and the tide

was high or on her way

in she’d be all arms and legs, 

like the surrendering

of evergreens that have spent

their summer, dignified, giving in

to the last of the mud tucked

under and in the crotch

of each of their roots.  All their lives

have been a setback, being a seed in rock,

and to think this is the only way
they’ve been able to thrive.  Hasn't

time and his more penetrating demands

worn them down and though of course

they weathered it, they did, 

and their needles held up

and through six or eight

decades of such howling, hasn't that

inevitable calm, been on the way, and then

gust: it’s enough now: a slight fifteen

miles an hour out

of the west south-west

will be enough coax to it.  All of autumn

will be taken down and right now too,

and the surrender, from the trunk

up through of this one in particular,
who I've been watching all summer, 

to spend her first winter spine-down

and completely under the snow, 

trunk some on stones down only to where her roots

knew, spine some in some bog her neighbor
maple knew and stunted in... I guess I wouldn’t

say it was what the tree dreamed

because who knows what trees

dream, but now it can tell the ground what all
about the wind and seeing

the sun coming to rise, the moon
coming to rise, and the earth

can tell it what all about ice

on the hollow ponds in spring, some-

times filled with water, sometimes

not, always their fair share of the salt
that stings, and in winter

which is on her way, of snow,

and though the ground may not say

the tree will feel it is a favored

ache, taking nothing but being able

to wait and deciding how is that different

than the life it already spent
in all manner of winds, in all manner
of upright skies, only now laid low
and easy, the whole cliff and rib

holding her and stroking her home,
welcome home.