By Tyler Curth

"...so I said, excuse me Tree, is this still my dream?"
-Maurice Manning

Each echo hems the green arbor avenue in this my dream is said.

Flow cones and needles, so said I in the cathedral domes of groves charged with wonder trees,

broadleaves reach over silver streams dreaming me so, like hands making green fire.

In me still there is a dark forest on a horizon where the sun rises

so golden a chorus as it slowly opens this still-empty drawer of morning.

And singing my still dream said I still, singing into this so-green gathering,

Be more lovely today, trees! If this is a dream not then the earth is choking! More we need of this,

your ancient night-talking, your long Oooo’s and the leaf and feathered Shhhh sweeping.

I this hear in my dreams even, the fortress of exclaimed silence, the dream trees aching

and said nodding, mysterious agreeance like that of the stars or oceans, their sacred and sleepless watching. Excuse I dream trees for being so demanding,
said the sun’s choir so golden, your long staring mouths open longer need we so we may keep this breathing! I say said so as the sun dreams of keeping earth

so does the creaking old moon dream in methis, so said my dream of giving all my days to trees, what delicate giving to keep giving. I wake under the green skirts and trunks like the ankle-legs of giants who sleep standing.No field or plotted garden will do for my enormousness, climbing.

I do not stop for orchardsor flowers, only the maroon and lavender-hearted old mothers

and fathers passing sugar with their laced robes falling, their aching ocher spindling

and roots thrumming, their wisdom sap seeping their deep humming inside me.

What word is more deep, more dark, more lovely than Conifer? Maybe Arbor, or Dendrology.

But then there’s Hemlock and Cedar. My heart is falling from high branches, but this still not

caring I am. How close is close enough to the green truth my dreaming?

I am the wanting to this dream falling just to touch all the arms and fingers of tree dreams

and still said I smiling on the way down, promises kept and unkept swept off me.

Surround yourself and swell, so-said the forest in me and excuse me of society for my roots

thrumming the forest drum I am, and I am the sap, the bright, tenuous moss blanketing.

I am the still-said so-sound of birds darting or sleeping or making opera of my open spaces.

I am the clearing where the light comes down a still column and there is nothing.

Isn’t peace the feeling of nothing? Like the feeling of growing or breathing or the earth’s timbre

pulsing tree-time, which is so slow one cannot so-said see it or hear it, but stopped in a clearing

with the green watching of all goodness towards your own heart’s pumping,

you will know it, and feel it. And it might save you as it saves me when I open the door to earth’s deep, dark closet. The forest. I go the end this, I set the world of, on still green fire dreaming.

The green crowns of trees are the sky’s floor, and on it I am most alive.