The Eternal Oak

Poems.

The Eternal Oak.

Beneath the heavens’ vast and vaulted dome,

A single acorn falls, its earthy home.

From verdant crown, a mother’s ancient trust,

Descends to soil, mingling loam with dust.

The springtime’s breath, both tender and divine,

Awakes the seed to stir beneath the pine.

With taproot deep, and shoot to greet the skies,

The sapling’s prayer is sung, though none replies.

At first, the fragile tendrils quake with fear,

As frosted winds of winter linger near.

Yet summer’s grace and sun’s caress attend,

And youthful growth to every breeze does bend.

Through decades, stretching boughs defy the gale,

Each leaf a banner, each ring tells a tale.

Its branches weave a green and golden spire,

A testament to time and earth’s desire.

The oak now stands, a monarch proud and tall,

Its canopy a roof, its roots a hall.

Beneath its shade, the deer and fox convene,

The sparrow sings, the squirrel darts unseen.

The seasons turn: the fiery leaves cascade,

A rustling hymn, the autumn’s promenade.

Winter arrives; the barren limbs stretch high,

As if to grasp the pale and frozen sky.

Yet even as the years begin to wane,

The oak withstands both famine and the rain.

Its trunk grows hollowed, moss and fungi thrive,

But life within its husk remains alive.

A century has passed, or two, or three;

The oak has borne the mark of history.

Men came and went, their empires turned to ash,

Yet still it stood through every storm and clash.

At last, the mighty tree begins to bow,

Its branches withered, worn by time’s long plow.

A lightning bolt, a tempest, or decay—

Its form collapses, crumbling where it lay.

Yet lo! Within the scattered limbs and bark,

A wealth of seeds lies dormant in the dark.

Each acorn holds the promise of rebirth,

Another oak, to grace the ancient earth.

And so the cycle spins, from life to dust,

From dust to life—a tree’s eternal trust.

The oak persists, a timeless, verdant flame,

Through all of nature’s ever-changing frame.

---

Smoke.

It begins with a spark.

A kiss of heat,

a lick of flame,

a language unspoken

but understood:

the brittle crackle of wood,

the curling whisper

of paper curling in on itself,

ash-soft,

atomized.

Smoke speaks in tongues—

in wisps and spirals,

it climbs like a thief

up chimney throats,

spills over rooftops,

leaks through keyholes,

slithers into lungs.

It wears the colors of dusk—

grey, bruised,

the smell of a memory burning.

It carries the weight of what was:

the stack of letters,

the bonfire of lost winters,

a house folded in on its frame,

a forest reduced to a ghost.

Smoke is history in reverse,

a body unbuilding itself.

It leaves behind a language

the tongue won’t form—

just soot,

just silence.

Yet watch it in sunlight:

how it dances like silk,

how it shapes itself

into things it cannot hold.

A face glimpsed and gone.

A thought unthought.

A wish.

In the end, smoke is nothing.

Nothing,

and everything.

It disappears as easily

as it arrives.

And yet the smell of it lingers,

like the echo of something

you almost remember,

but cannot place.

---

Gravity of Absence.

Time stretches thin when you’re gone—

a taut and trembling string,

its seconds pulled to breaking.

Minutes smear like wet ink,

hours expand,

slow and planetary,

orbiting some absence

too heavy to name.

I measure the days

by the way the light changes:

how morning spills

in fractured shards,

how dusk stains the room

in bruised ochres and greys.

Each sunrise feels fraudulent,

each sunset too long.

I’ve read that time itself bends—

that near the edge of gravity’s maw,

clocks drag like anchors,

moments churn

into viscous loops.

And this is how it feels:

to wait for you.

You are both everywhere

and nowhere.

In the shifting shadows on the wall,

in the empty chair

that leans a fraction too far,

in the silence that clings

to the last thing you said.

I want to outrun the lag of longing,

find the frame where we move in sync.

But your absence makes time elastic,

a slingshot that pulls me back—

to that last touch,

that last look.

And when you return—

(if you return)—

will time snap shut,

a door slamming in the wind?

Or will I still feel it,

this ache of expansion,

this ghostly stretch,

even when you’re near?

For even now,

I know:

there are distances

no clock can collapse.