P O E T R Y
Oak
LESLIE LEONARD
T
HERE is a vibration in the marrow of me,
It’ s a slow hum like a quiet hive or the first deep moans of thunder. I am a coiled oak root, and my hollow pathways thirst. I have curled my toes in deep black earth and deeper red clay and I have been like a rigid lightning rod, and a thrumming livewire. I am whole and solid all the way through and I can feel the space that I occupy, here now, and here too. My sister is the spine of a sequoia, she is the fixed crag that juts from the earth to be accommodated, and she holds on tight enough to strangle. My mother is a magnolia, low and settled like the flat river-stone that feels the muffled water flex around it like the deft and weightless touch of God.
You would perhaps like to be the deep-rooted pine, but I assure you that you stretch yourself too thin, and the anxious, shedding birch is closer to the truth.
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