A Night Under a Tree, an Oracle
After a spell the doorways open,
Like two orphans the divided green grasses in waves part,
And I am attenuated to a foreshadow,
Carried aloft on a wild ride, into the orchards.
I leap to the ground beneath a particular tree,
My mount too frenzied to mind the bit,
and I gallop to a halt beneath my shady spot.
The tree is a vibrant series of divergences,
A crackle of energy like a razor split into lightning bolts.
A tree of energy sped beyond light, giving shade to this spot.
This moment caught between the scene and unseen below my feet.
I am sheltered within the shade of a tree dividing light moments upon a myriad of leaf nerves.
What bounces back rushes into the future winds, warming the air.
Yet some pass through the green membrane,
And the photons are mighty nothings
That lift the bark from the roots
As the sun pulls it back into the air,
Like me pulling back and tying my hair,
I hang upside down from a branch,
Slowly growing, all within and without.
A tachyon tree whose fruit falls up
Into the dirt ceiling of the black and weighted future mingling in rock and
Denser forms, locked, entropic above me like a cavern roof,
Mineralizing and crystallizing, holographs and night crawlers,
Worms writhing in the dreamtime grey of spongy loam.
In this cave, this skull, I see flickering forms on the painted walls.
I drop to the ground and lean back against the trunk.
Strange events unfolding in dreams reaching towards starlight, while
The branches of the tree at night now nourished from a deep profundity of light,
I receive photovoltaic charge from a trillion suns, far and wee
Stars I cannot name, but faint, lanterns on the river flowing onward
Like orphans upon whose orchards I close my eyes, and sleep beneath the tree.
My dreams are like leaves that grow inside my mind powered by distant galaxies.
Roots plunging below me underground have no eyes, no larynx,
bound within the common ground of the charging future,
wearing away the soils and forming the channels,
Reaching into the rock, dividing the firmament like rhizome ships plowing ice-locked seas.
And I feel so close to this strange tree among many others
In the greenery, the calming scenery
Upon whose perfumed breezes I catch the coy
Promise of renewal, the siren flowers wailing in
Colors pungent and buzzing with chatter.
Venus drops below the horizon, this earth’s feverish twin.
I feel drawn here like an afterimage, like dawn pushes its deepest shadows behind my waking body,
Describing shadows draining away, I and my shadow caught between two spheres,
Pressed ever so slowly into the stiffening earth,
A shadow not yet long, the morning still gathering my tall past,
Still retaining my shape, the midmorning heralding my nothingness
An emptiness upon the ground, the sun shines on me from above, a flat character
Defined by the moments, that, like light, stream down around me.
Noon fire burning me as though I was infested with futures, crossroads of atomic assemblages
Defining my shape without contrast, contoured like a cup of dried clay curling upward in a dry riverbed,
Pushing the thirst into my throat like a root into fresh earth,
While I pause beneath this tree of tachyon dreams
Stealing the fruits of foresight and coincidence
From its star-leaning boughs.
Each one tastes of fever. Tastes like home.
But plucked, they wither so quickly they must be eaten straightaway.
They rot before they even bounce upon the grasses which are
Whispering below, whispering of
Rumors of seeds and new days, but the seeds are in me,
And they crackle and spread like fire
Upon my nerves, growing like a tree within, carrying sweet energy
to the roots nestled in my skull like writhing worms slowed
With drunkenness from slurping up
Such rich victuals, such rare viands.
Time seems to stop, and the stolen moments
Ripened upon this tree fill me with visions.
And I am only a collection of forms, spinning like coins
Able to reflect fermented sigils, a currency of content without significance,
Wrangled of crude and wily futures
That roam unseen.
To return home presently, a powerful symbol
I catch with with a lasso of wanton prosody,
And with white knuckles the fury makes a line for home
Where, it is happy to shelf itself for a time,
To be stable within a stabled place. ,
The tree within me sings in the starlight of logos.
I brush down my vision’s twitching coat with soothing keystrokes,
Give it a cybernetic pasture in which to roam.
My ride sleeping in old Whitman hay,
Sighing like a bird in a beard of Spanish moss.
