Lisa Creech Bledsoe

There are No Oaks in My Name but I Begin in Augury

"Everything in the forest is the forest." – Richard Powers, The Overstory

1.

The trees accept me as they accept Crow
and this fierce sleet – together we are howling

and unhewn, not outsiders or others.
Your body shakes and lurches because your brain

has the same broken pathways as mine. Ours
are the same as this planet's: we have contributed

strip mines, petroleum products and maybe
some poetry. Lucky for us very soon after lightning

strikes, fiddleheads unfurl amid the ash
without sharing their agenda.

2.

Today we are spelled rowan, fir, Crow,
chlorofluoromethane – I don't remember the rest

or if I do I pretend otherwise. These things
have a tendency to go downhill.

I tell Crow we are each other and there is
a sudden raw coughing sound, then Crow drops

scat. This is said to be a good omen.
I startle a winter-still hare with my laughter.

Together we are mountain, we are ozone, predator,
perception, righteous eggs and wishing, axis

of the world. Everyone wants to be a queen or killer
whale, not feed the owl's chicks or be washed and broken

down to carbon and river silt. We set out
toward a story believing everything can be ours

but become beechmast and hazelnuts, the forest's
wedding confetti, decaying. We feed the crawfish anyway.

3.

Translating my thoughts into you and tree and Crow,
I fly but take centuries to learn to do it.

Meanwhile our seednames are hawthorn and greenbrier 
and the sign of all splendid things. Plants sweeten

their nectar when they hear the wingsong of bees –
trees know this and weave it into the future. Every moment

there are untried stories blooming unpredictably
by thousands below us in the heaving soil.

I can see mycorrhizas beginning to nourish your synapses –
we slow to harvest carbon dioxide while Crow preens.

The shadow fingers of the spruce reach down the mountain
into the snowfield below, rewilding what they touch.

A former boxer, trainer, and USA Boxing referee, Lisa Creech Bledsoe is now a beekeeper, forager, and writer living in the mountains of North Carolina. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and the author of two full-length books of poetry, Appalachian Ground (2019), and Wolf Laundry (2020). She has new poems out or forthcoming in The Blue Mountain Review, American Writers Review, Sky Island Journal, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, Red Fez, and River Heron Review, among others. She posts photos, poems, and essays at AppalachianGround.com