The Roots Return 

I stop. A gnarled, blasted oak capsized, 

casualty of the night, up-ended 

with thrust earth, a bank exposed like a torn-out eye.  

I pull at its frayed threads, rupture, rip out its lines,  

springing like sockets and hang them mid-air,  

wiry trophies, waves of witch hair, straining  

with strung forearms. I unhook roots from cold clay, 

wrench out clods of earth, riddled with woodlice;  

a clinging, cloying scent of soil, centipede-sewn,  

this musk of mulch and bark and trunk. 

But they grow back, these roots; snaking, coursing  

their slow ways re-hooking, re-routing the trees,  

regrowth, anchoring these cross-sails to their  

solemn places of testimony. They sway and soar  

before scissor-storms, creak under wheeling screens  

and seasons of sky and I’m mad and breaking them  

over and over. The roots grow their ways, knurled 

with canker. I crouch, as base as a beast, 

phantomned in twilight, a sodden, leering face with two 

white orbs planted in flesh, searching. My feet are  

grounded, mole-blind in this night, this wood,  

these riddling roots, this time, these trees. 

Matthew M. C. Smith