by Alex MacConochie

The bark stands out from the tree.
Press a palm against a lightning scar,
Slip your pinkie in between

The smooth cool bole and the hexagon scales.
Inhale. Really stand here,

Really deeply let a pine grove on a hill above a reservoir
In mid-November in. The red

Small berries in their open yellow husks
That look like flowers from a distance
Shrivel on the branch, the

Resinous full sweetness is a shout,
Ignite me at the bottom of the lungs, where we

Had meant to meet each other acres are a dark gray plume,
The roots of this specific tilted pine

Buckle up under a fieldstone wall
From a time when they were desperate,

When they would girdle trees on even land like this
And the lowland trail’s a man-deep ditch,
A washout in the deadly edge

Of a hurricane. Sudden, gone
And hard to imagine now: in heavy calm

We walk on gravel halfway out across a finger of a lake.
Invasive mussels, glass, a hardwood ghost

Riven, bored into, stripped and sculpted smooth,
A shelter once for hook-lip fish,

Rolled up close to shore and written in: Initials, plus sign, heart.

Alex MacConochie teaches neurodivergent students in northwest Connecticut and has published poems in Meridian, Tar River Poetry, Main Street Rag, and elsewhere.