Gnarled Beauty Day

On day one of twenty
twenty one under blue skies
and full winter sun
the Widow Wyile, Gorgeous
and the family Taurus
trotted nimbly among the Trees
who people the rocky Cape
famous in these parts
for the way it Splits
into the churning highest
tide waters of Fundy
highest not in these parts alone
but on the planet entire

They wandered the path
in the brisk bright weather
their trekking hooves
and poles percussed the newly
refrozen earth
so recently sodden soil
air pockets making the ground
sound hollow

Stones slick with sparkling
ice called for treading attention
as did the effulgent emeralds, chartreuse
and other moss greens
vividly hummocking tree bases
roots and gnarled apertures
inviting the walkers’ gaze
into their lush depths
and on into fathomless wonderings
regarding the mycelian world below even
as the knurled weaving whistling waving
trunks branches and twigs above
now only leaved by lobaria
             precious lungwort
browned mauved and silvered too by wintering
cladonia usnea and hypogymnia
their rosettes pixie cups hooded
tubes and beards opening
into greater multiverses of the mysterious
webs they were mere yet vital rhizines of
the very magnitude whereof could
have transfixed them forever
but lo, they moved on in marvel
exclaiming their appreciation
of nooks in crannies
the trajectories of branch growth
the weathered experience of their sky
and cyclical canopy support
with gentle nickers or exuberant vocables
all of which put them into a reverential
philosophical mode
transporting them further into the subtle
parts of their journey
as Fundy breezes grew swifter
flexing their aeronautical musculature
atop the cleft
to swish and swoop twenty
twenty cobwebs out to sea
clearing all orifices with awe
filling alveoli with fine salt
air and beaming the satisfaction
of being here there
every momentary where
a sense or many to carry
onward throughout this too
oh too one year
as it brightens
two days later
with snow
de-lights
truths
and humanity recalls
their purpose
their powers
to be oh
a tidy sum of
two and one
oh two
and one
clip clop

gallop gallop
we walk we talk

pok tok
tok pok

fresh water clear
as ice oh two
and one it has
begun
the air clears
the waters too

the path is good
we too shall walk
throughout the living
beauty of this oh one wood
so find our twisted way to greater
gnarled
sentience