Native
What a coast pine thinks will not be
audible unless or until wind in it becomes,
making not exuberance nor a dance,
but a kind of torsion and response
without translation. So maybe for a coast pine
thinking is the wrong word – no thought, none,
though it knows sun from dark, knows when
to stretch itself towards something new and green
and when to tell roots, grip tighter.
Maybe because a coast pine can neither ambulate
nor vocalize, maybe it has learned
to hear, and in its cambium and sapwood replay
the song-remnants of whales, gray whales, the ones
offshore all the summer millennia
at basalt uplifts, loitering with calves, loitering
and backscratching. Maybe coast pines hear
with no words what we can neither register
nor credit… A gusty day, wet first, then dry,
or sere weather, balmy, low tide or high,
solo or with others, each tree makes time
in rings: root, needle, pollen and cone
working local rates to make and keep
every part in unison, with whatsoever
no need to say imagine that.
Lex Runciman has published seven collections of poems, including The Admirations, which won the Oregon Book Award, and, most recently, Unlooked For, from Salmon Poetry (Ireland, 2022). Read more.