Worn thin at the base of the tree by deer or dogs,
Crusted coat of the loblolly,
Giant lizard skin in bright light,
Picked clean of larvae by the nuthatch and ladder-back
woodpecker,
Cleaved into toe and hand holds for the brown squirrel’s
steep climb,
Sloughed off no less than an outer skin as the year’s
ring grows,
Brittle, leathered brown scales,
Like feathers, rising from ancient dinosaur bones.
Circumference builds, layer by layer,
Trunk, branches, limbs, and roots circle wider,
Music’s disk played out in annual random notes
Beneath the corrugated grooves and ridges
Basic strings hold together, in a quantum dance,
Addition rules like a wordsmith’s grammar.
© cmheuer, 2013
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