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Clade Song 5

Bolling Grove, Avenue of the Giants Stop #2

Each ecosystem makes its own set of rules,
coordinates for this, logarithms for that.
In this canopy, at the axis of x (being the limb)
and y (being the trunk), the years accumulate
their treasures of fallen needles and twigs.
The mat builds and builds. The air grows
more humid above it, with its spongy
corridors, with its microbial cities. Salamanders
move in with their small possessions to feast.
The hawks land and survey the silvery distance.
And a dogwood tree grows ownerless and lovely,
200 feet up, its roots clenched tight in the limb
of the redwood. The arboreal salamanders
live out their lives up here, their small
black feet never once touching the ground.
In the afternoon breeze that carries in the fog,
the dogwood claps out a soft applause,
exponents for continuing this existence.

 
          
 
Clade Song 5 Right
Gillian Wegener has had poetry published Spillway, Packinghouse Review, In Posse, and Sow’s Ear. Her chapbook Lifting One Foot, Lifting the Other was published by In the Grove Press in 2001, and her first full-length collection of poetry, The Opposite of Clairvoyance was published in 2008 by Sixteen Rivers Press. Wegener lives in Modesto where she hosts the monthly 2nd Tuesday Reading Series, is founding president of the Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center, and is serving as the poet laureate for the City of Modesto because she truly believes that poetry can make the world a better place.  

 

 

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