Le Hêtre: Beech Gate

 

The roots of the beech are living serpents
There is a green woman in the tree gate
her eyes are the green fire of growing things
The winged deer stamps its hooves
impatient for me to go in or go up.
High in the branches, close to the crown,
the raven couple wait for me
but for now my way is down
into the painted cave, past the see stone
where a ruined king came to call me.

For time I do not count I am among the long
luminous elegant people who raised me
when I was away from my body as a boy.
But I will not spend another life with them,
not yet. I feel my way down, ever down
to the shallows of blind fish
where grains of sand sparkle like jewels.

I choose the grain that glows like cinnabar
and it becomes a universe. I see now
how the infinitely large is contained
in the infinitely small, how the high branches
of the world tree in one universe
are the roots of the tree of life in another.

Drawing: "Beech Gate" (c) Robert Moss