Beech

For a tree, you're the worst kind

of friend, remembering everything.

Pale-skinned, slightly brailled, blank

page of pre-adolescence. The way

the smallest knife-slice would darken

with time, rise and widen.

mark was here. Left his.

But these are the digs you're used to,

sufferer of mere presence,

scratched years, scratched loves

we wanted to write on the world

and couldn't trust to an eardrum.

(I scarred you myself long ago with

my own jack-knife, jill-name.

You took her as the morning

unsteamed around me. Took us

as we had to be taken, in.) Old relief,

new reminder, I was young, what could

I have written? Didn't care then, had

to see it scraped out, big letters beneath

your erotic nubs and crotches. O beech,

it's no big riddle: we fell in the forest,

you heard. Quiet, in your own way.

In your own way, spreading the word.