Hydra

A tree's dark leaves explode
to black-wing squadrons in the sky
like an airburst lifting all the heavy fruit
away.

More and more I'm seeing
hydras in the green world.
I know alchemy in the pot and it's not
gold, it's green and grey matter—
smoke curled fiddlehead in the fire
of a synapse.

I'll not romance away,
but to stake it that green engenders
other colours burst from root to germinate.
Farsight eyes a mountain down
records the rockiness of its whale hump
brown-in-grey
and the ear's too deaf to hear its echo sing.

It receives nearness by degrees and grows—
the Hydra’s sprung new throats!—
and the Nearsight’s news is piqued by pine.
Shoots erupt through rock
thrushes plumb silence from the valleys
adding upon limb-brush, hum
and stream-spoke sound—the mound’s a mouth
of syllables.

Written word’s a reaping of wild seed
in buried space,
is the plant and farming of grey places
and that’s a hydra too.
The bough’s birchfruit of birds
will break the earth for seeds
to take and preen them for their worth.
Patience! Observe a birth
immaculate.