i am a hundred years more Rebecca before you were a seed

i fell to mouldering in thatthis darkleaf cathedral where you come

to bury the bones of brief chittering things and burn waxcandles

in roothollows ah you young Rebecca life all aflickering past short roots unplanted

i am all your church and ever the altar at which you Rebecca kneel i all

goldenarched around by sunbeam and sapling-green

i share with you rootlessness and in winter you brush away me my snow

humming your softflame Rebecca the warmblood beatsong to soften my ache of frost

while you ask knowing of what time is to the forest and you sing up your low Rebecca voice

to the horned ones which do not walk the silent hymn of season same as we all

then twice up here you come bringing anothergirl firstly you raise Rebecca

you open your arms to the sky saying this is your heart and

home yes this the forest that sings you by name and Rebecca

it is true we the trees know you but you never learned from us

the songs called growing and slowly and the next time Rebecca you bring

your brighthaired friend you kiss her in the prickebelly shadow of the holly

where i feel you like a seed unhusked and shiversway as she branchsnap slams

whipslap runs so when again you dewyoung Rebecca come to me you come alone a seed

ungrowing Rebecca and withering back your shoots as you bitterbrittle

freeze your sapling blood into something thinner than lancewood leaf

which snaps you through to the heartwood solvent veinsap dizzily diluting Rebecca you

can barely make your mountainwalk up to me until for two snowmelts

you do not return but even once your starved arterial taproot has begun

sucking in again greedy sunlight and sugar to colour your suppling Rebecca bark

back alive you have disremembered every prayersong taught you by we the trees

and i rot in the forest you called your heart and Rebecca you do not visit