ARBUTUS

Empress Hotel

The old trees wear scars well,
grab and hold the earth
together better than sapling

wood bending with each recent
gust, or so we say with ages
packed beneath our peeling bark

delicately exposing what we could
not young. Not nimble dilettantes,
we take our wine in gulps for pain,

for all that has been lost–
that we will surely follow
to the fire, warming as always,

toil by toil until we become
bucketed gray ash to be stirred
and washed into the hungry heart

of soil. These old trees stand
their ground to wait with memory
and dream, always almost there.