BEFORE THE FIRES COME

     after David Elliott

Gather and grow.

Gather and grow...

Until every part of you

—bark, branch,

heartwood, and sap—

is bursting with presence,

with a listening

older than the languages

that first began to reach

for something larger

than language itself.

When you are this presence, 

the complete 

embodiment of it,

send all you have gathered

into the fibers and rings 

of your being 

on to the seedlings 

before the fires come.

The secondary succession, 

the forests of the future, 

depend upon it.