The solstice comes at 2 AM.  Clouds cloak
starlight so well the owls can barely see;
no moon.  Out in the winter woods you work
at accessing the mind of one oak tree,
in darkness dense enough to conjure up
an atmosphere of increased intimacy.

But silence still from bark, despite the hope
oak thoughts might stir at how astronomy
reflects perfection: how celestial
exactitude leads to our random life.

Yet branches will not whisper; bark is rough,
unspoken.  Woods: unutterably still.

At 2 AM a gust of wind; branch-creak;
as if the woods, at last, herald the hour.
You run your hands up and down a trunk; you seek
synaptic traces, signs of tree mind-power.

Tree’s lean is forty-five degrees, as though
it worships slant more than the bright noon sun,
or maybe it just loves geometry. 

No matter storms, how hard their fierce gales blow,
its angle’s fixed; and nothing he knows can
explain such daring, yet stability.

He’s looked at roots, trunk width, the shapes of leaves,
and even asked the swifts who congregate
on branch-diagonals.  They cannot say
just why a tree has grown this other way.

 Quite stubbornly, he tries to calculate
some formula for slant; math’s what he loves.
This oak must love it too, they all decide—
hypotenuse—the source of leafy pride!

He finds geometry in woods so easily:
triangular tree crowns, branch-trapezoids,
trunk perpendiculars, bird trills in threes—
fours—fives;

                         the soaring red-tailed hawks that lord
it over songbirds, specialize in arcs,
parabolas, ellipses.  How hawks trace
the formulae he teaches, dawn to dark.

He might as well move to this math-filled place,
continue his academy for free;
use birds as tutors, trees to diagram;
expand beyond the high nobility
to all Crotone’s pupils.  Crises loom
if so few study nature, science, math.

 Abundant learning, on this wooded path.

A narrow street in Ghent, Belgium.  Dark blue;
late dusk.  Lit windows are small golden squares,
and you slouch in an entranceway. 

                                                                So true,
that this may be the end.  And please, no tears.
You hear a rustling, flights above; perhaps
she’s coming down now: this is it!  Beware,
you tell yourself, of being weak; no hopes
remain of reconciling. 

                                          Stare and stare,
but she’s not there.  You must have heard a breeze.

So emptiness replaces stress.  The sky
goes almost black; more windows come ablaze.
The minutes drag: go up the stairs?  You sigh
at fate’s perversity—you need your pride—
and leave. 

                    Night drowns you in its poignant tide.