Pine

Say it’s the wind, if it makes you feel better.
As for me, the trees shiver
As if they remember a needless cruelty done to an old lover.
As if they feel again the wound of the dull blade
Gouging the outline of a stylized heart,
Then tremble anew at the slash that was the blunt arrow piercing it.
Inside it, I carved your initials, bold and angular,
Through the bark and the cambium,
All the way through to the tough fibers of the heartwood.
But when I was done, there was no room left for my own.
So I gashed them beneath the heart,
In the spot where the rot began.

by Ron Yazinski