A Tall Tree

THREE POEMS

A TALL TREE

A tall tree is a fountain of sweet water

Lifted out of the earth from the channels of lost rivers,

From the slow watercourses of the rain-

A fountain rising in sprays of green, falling in sprays of

gold.

The trunk is a tower of water throbbing upward toward

the sun.

The branches are streams of water that drip to the last bud

on the limb.

The broad top casts a shower of leaves against the sky.

There is no river or brook that sings between its banks

As water sings in the trunk of a tree, mounting from

branch to branch-

A river flowing up to the sky.