Grant Clauser

Cottonwood

Walking under winter cottonwoods 
I think how diameter and height 
are poor ways to measure a tree
or anything for that matter. What
about the black scar of lightning
on the mossless side of this one,
or how a small village of mushrooms
argues over a rotten stump. My father
is about as tall as me, but scarred 
from scalpel and the bird tracks 
of stitches that sewed his heart 
back together. If these trees talked
perhaps they’d gossip about moss
and recall that winter all the flickers
disappeared. When I visit my parents
now, we share soup, talk about 
the empty house across the street. 
We make vague plans that could be
next week or the next century.
Time is only good for so much. 
Like the body, it’s warmed
by memory. When no one near 
is looking I lean into the oldest 
trees, press my ear against the parts
that look like they’ve lived through
the hardest weather, and listen
for that silence I pray is there, 
the sound a heart makes between
each old worry, the sound we want
most but are still afraid of. 

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