NaPoWriMo Entry #1: "The Tree of Knowledge"

Before I get to the poem, I thought you all should see what inspired me to write what follows.  The following images are of the same tree, though not the tree that originally inspired me, as I did not have my camera with me while I was on campus.  In any case, I hope the images inspire you too (if not, then that's your problem, meanie)!

The Tree of Knowledge (also known as Loopsy)

This is like something out of a weird Little Nemo dream.

The Tree of Knowledge

The tree of knowledge spells its name in permafrost

moss dangles from its limbs like frayed fingers framed 

by the edges of a memory of another age,

of smoke tendrils reaching to the earth to twist 

into the fog from which the sweet dew of life

chimes a tune for which only the sun will rise.

What name does the wintry skeleton give itself

as it bends -- crick, crack -- with the wind

to track its tired oaken digits in the snow?

Can anyone read its name -- of whispers and salt --

if nobody is around to see the letters?

In whose language does the tree of knowledge speak?

If not our own, then the traces of a tree thought

must be found on the pages of our books,

like subconscious -- subliminal -- metaphors

to be teased from the edges of our collections;

nobody will read the tattered adventures of pulp pap

for the one hundred years to come -- or fifty.

But tree language is a permanent marker

beneath the layers of pulp upon which

the author pens his name in far too many words.

If we could reverse engineer the page,

perhaps we could rediscover the sacrificial lamb

whose voice -- chop, crash -- we cannot hear.

Perhaps, too, the tree of knowledge could tell us

what the Woolly Mammoth calls itself 

from the depths of so many ACGT repetitions 

archived in the permafrost cover of gnarled roots.

Perhaps humanity is but a prolongated process of return:

to ourselves, to the beings we were meant to be,

to the thought bubbles we actually are, archived, too, 

in the sap stream memories of the grove.

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