ᏥᏈᏍᏗ ᏕᏡᎬᎢ (Tsiquisdi Detlugvi) "Many Trees"

by ferris greybear raceland, ky, 10/19/2014 A.D.

leaf like lower michigan, tea to sip, sassafrass by my hips
where turkeys have scratched, and eggs have hatched
surrounded by seng, below the poplars, leaves like tulips

no illusion, gaining focus, weaving through locust,
kingdom of God, the lovely realm, beside the slippery elm
reality beneath the holly, no televised hocus-pocus

striding through high dollar oaks, wearing full grin
blackjacks and chestnuts, scaly sycamores and cherries
wrapped in shellbark hickory, inside the hollow chinkapin

always stop and go, through the red oaks at ritter though
the walnuts and sugartrees cling to the stony bluffs
tears pour out of the trunk, frozen into branches of willow

mingled within, deer graze about dogwood and redbud,
and blacktop between the beech and the appletree,
still atop the red cedar, the nest rests, nature's HUD

ink is forever perched on long pieces of birch,
inside my inner grove of ash and mulberry,
peeling away silver maple strips, still in search

covered in needles of pine, the wind steals from time,
ironwood found by the hackberry on the mound,
crooked sourwood and straight sweetgum, totally sublime

sold by the boundary and not by the acre, for the taker
happy with paw paw, shumake, and shagbarks, still a giver
for the heirs and assigns, responsible to the Maker