Tara Pine
(1770 / 1977 AD)

maritime jack pine
arm-waving
declamation
sonnet to wild growth
a wilderness now

lop-sided
forest church
spired with birds
crows’s nest
crowning savage
extravagance

radical disorder
flustered
clicking needles
clustered
knitting the wind

salted the air
old man’s beard
sprouting fresh bristles
old salt sea salt

“ill fares the land
to hastening ills a prey”
without a helping hand
to point the way

each broken limb
an olive branch extended
scorched earth policy
salt-sown earth