Litany for a plant

I need a plant. I need a thing
to take care of. I need
a little green brownspotted
blackdirt growing
quietness. I need a sunlit
dawn knowing my name filtered
through a thin green window.
I need chlorophyll
working its magic on beams of
grassmade early morning dewdrop
sweetmaking green. I need
the dark earth sucking water
from a black crevice
its black magic churning
wormilled rockturned starblind
darkness and cold into
the opposite of dust. I need the heat
to blind me. I need the dumb making
to charge my coldened blood. I need
the dropturned leaves to turn again
their faces to the windblown sun.
I need millions of tiny years
summed up and burning out some unknown
new growth into the air. I need four
hundred feet of dark red gnarled wood
and needles glistening wetly on goldheaded
branches hoisting themselves
to the sky. I need ten strong men
to fail to bring you down. Old one
I need the peace that comes with knowing
something sacred holds still
in the world. I need your green tongues
of flame to lick at old wounds
stitching us together away from ourselves.
I need your brownbranching grasp
to keep me from drifting off
into unknowing terrible sleep. I need
to know the snake hanging
from your branches. I need to watch
the dropping of flesh massful
onto the ground from a height. I need
the gnawer at your root to strike
a vein to quicken old brown stone
to movement. I need jeweleyed venom
barking new greennesses into the bark.
I need a knocker of dark secrets hidden
in the dark bark hiding a smallstone
smoldering pearl in the knot. I need
that pearl held out in a hand like an offering.
I need the hand to be a plant’s hand.

I need a plant. I need a growing
growler groaning toward heat and air.
I need a green thin stem surprisingly strong
holding up the weight of a plain
of fallow greennesses of creases and caresses
of tiny worldmaking hardworking grandeur.
I need a singer of life crying
forward into old roads covered over
by dead trees. I need the rasping of root
in dirt. I need the unfurling of fiddleheads
to sing forth a new symphony. I need
fruits swelling large for the harvest.
I need yellow light shining through white bark.
I need juicecrush flowing waterlike
through valleys percolating up
through the ground. I need springs bubbling sap
into cabins of wood fought for by labor.
I need snow on the ground with shoots
dotting the melting patches. I need two
leaves on a thin stalk shivering
in moonlight. I need robinsong warbling
over the heads of small seeds sprouting
to enliven their growth. I need rings
of woody material widening to push
the ground out of their way. I need
new greennesses pushing out from
the brown dark bark gnarled. I
need the robin to build its songfilled
nest in a branchcrotch. I need
the fecundity of fungi on the branches.
I need quiet of the sunlight shooting
through thousands of branched leaves
quivering. I need whisper at dawn.
I need burrows underground foxholes.
I need duff layers eaten through
by worms. I need brooks murmuring
through crooks of roots. I need small
fish swimming in their schools at
midnight. I need oldnesses giving way
to youngnesses giving way to oldnesses.
I need dapplegray yellowshot ashbark.
I need the crunch of dead leaves underfoot.
I need snowquiet deadbranch mourning.
I need those purple mountains majesty.
I need a walk between trees in the dark.
I need that moment when stopping to rest
it suddenly seems that all the weary
forestroads in all their meandering come
to rest their heads at my astonished
feet, none of them needing more than me.