Published on: 3/8/2010
The Babel Tree

A grisled tree sits on the spot you were once,
a requiem in the choreography of its limbs.
Leaves like questions lift and pluck at the sky.

I whistle --
the dog comes,
loping out of the long grass,
brown like a gnome and suddenly
I am a sprite of the wood,
still and small against the forest
of this tombstone oak, and
every runnel in the bark spells
a message in some glyphic language
I never learned but half-remember.
And I wonder,
if I whistle for you,
will you awaken
and come loping
out of the long grass, too,
no beckoned dog,
but a homeward, homesick man
with verbless heart and
fairy-ring eyes?