Trunk routes

All the thinking about the trunk led to another poem. It's inspired by two key ideas. That water (sap) flows up the tree in the xylem which is surprisingly deep inside the tree. That as you go into the trunk, horizontally, you are going back in time - with each ring representing a year's growth. So there is a vertical axis and a horizontal axis.

This time is all brittle and corrugated.

No wonder -

we all need armour these days.

(And yet!

Which others offer such artistry

of platings, peelings, ravines, and lenticels!)

But, back in the past, beyond the growings

and flowings of sugar sap downwards,

near the heart of things,

a river runs upwards.

Mountains of wood scaled by a stream

of inside deep time currents.

The push and the pull of it;

the seep and the suck of it.

Sweet water rising

from the cavernous deeps

to the green blue highs.