Whispers lap, layered as a waterfall
even in breeze so low it can scarcely be called so,
rising to ring out in higher winds like
the clash of minted coins falling.
We have come to lie at feet that are not feet
any more than branches are limbs
—but we can only call things by words we know,
and what grows below the skin of earth
is below our thinking,
as what goes on inside our lying skin
is below an aspen’s thinking, I think.
The whispers we have come to hear
say nothing— are just fancies, like those breakers
that crash from an empty conch.
The aspen’s whispers are simply, strictly,
struck by the wind’s thumb that is not a thumb
—and say nothing.
What sense is spoken is spoken underground—
along shallow, sunless roots that reach and knit
and where coded messages run—
the monologue of a monstrous clone
communing with its forty thousand selves,
each saying what is already known,
laid down in its horny fossil of memory
—how to embrace stasis before snow
then how to wake again— and speaking
as a heart speaks with a head on matters more immediate:
where to sucker next; what ageing self to sacrifice;
where pine and goat and fire have encroached;
on which hillside sun will shine.