To a Wolf Tree

Not needing to believe
in the dark to come,
or the death march
I’ve sentenced the stars
to undertake 
for the rest of my life
to know I’d gone far enough
from home—
I thought I’d climb
the hillside
just to the ridge,
following deer trail
through the knee-high grasses,
alone for a while longer.
Up ahead, I saw it. 
Eldest living thing
in the woods
having survived
wind, and, rain, and ice,
axes even, the short lived
fires lightning made
through the centuries
as it grew like a poem
one eventually learns
by heart. Older even than my forebearers,
who could not look out on a forest
without calculating board feet
per acre—their surveys,
the quick jot of their shorthand,
faded in a logbook—
the washed-out sky at dusk.
Were this Horeb, and I Moses,
I might have looked
for signs—the glowing
of mushrooms. The swirl of . . .
The branches overhead
going all the way to heaven.
Empty. Farther.