I Pray to the Trees

Cathedral of trees, temple of leaves.
I find myself suddenly there with you,

delivered by a dream through your doors
into deeper dreaming.  Church

of webbed roots, speaking roots,
and young diaphanous jungle stems.

Forest of sleepwalkers and unspoken
alphabets, come home, come back

to my moon-mind—the place of my birth,
arena of sunfire and rain, winter and

storming trees.  My firestorm mind
on the altar of dawns, in a world of junipers,

red pines and orange light.  Church
of a sinking star—the solitary mourner

of woodland visions, griever in the night
of burning elms giving themselves

to the sliver-moon’s glass eye, clouded
with ash and lit by the sun’s blind gaze, 

watching branch shadows bend
into seedbeds, ancient choirs of earth,

where green-black shoots grow into light,
the burning daybreak light. 

Alexander Etheridge has been developing his poems and translations since 1998. His poems have been featured in Wilderness House Literary Review, Ink Sac, Cerasus Journal, The Cafe Review, The Madrigal, Abridged Magazine, Susurrus Magazine, The Journal, and many others. He was the winner of the Struck Match Poetry Prize in 1999.

Published August 15 2022