tree song

Bay laurel, bay laurel, you
have fallen across the creek-bed,
winters ago; three quarters of your roots
are silver curves, gracefully twisting
dead wood. How do you
continue?

Do you see loss or ruin or
a change in reference, of orientation
and angle to the sun?
One deep root lies yet pressed into stone
while living branches have become
new bodies rising above water, with air beneath.
Death may come sooner than it might
but I am living now.