Emily Van Kley

I stood inside the tree
which had survived burning.

Its sapwood was a soft lip
below the bark. Its heartwood

had been kept dead
as a porch column at the center,

so when the fire
came there would be

something to sacrifice.
Flames entered, smothered,

left a periphery
impertinent with life.


        ***

Below any grove, a sunk
thicket of clasp and microbe.  

Site of negotiations.
Shared root cellar stocked

with sunlight's drunk-down
syrup, fungus-mined

minerals threaded
from thorax, litter, stone.


     ***

Elsewhere the mantis
hatches 1,000 young,

snacks on the proximate
and birth-stunned.

Procreation: so nutritious.
Life: it takes and it gives.

Each night a velvet painting
of curtains closing

and no one ever
becomes the curtain.

The frangipani for a moment
overrun with tiny

exaggerated elbows,
ambulant spores that disperse

in all the ways
nature intends.