BARK

A tree’s first protection, a habitat for life in miniature, I gift you the ability to be both porous and impenetrable.

Your feet follow a single-track earthen path pressed by hikers past. Coasting through groves you come to a stand, and still. Your stunned gaze drunk in the bark of a trunk. You and a tree, and its enveloping craggy periphery.

Below my wrinkles and cracks long vertical rivers flow soil to sky and back. I am this inner intricacy, and the hugging armor around me. A feast is how I need my forest friends to see me. For them to roam hungry, spreading my seeds and yet sparing me. If they could get at my sweet sap and supple flesh it’s likely they wouldn’t hold back. And so I unfurl in rippled armature, repelling partners and pests, planting myself for blazes that blacken without burn.

My rifts and pockets collecting nutrients and dew, sheltering many others with no roots in view. I am the habitat both in and far from ground, inviting embellishments of lichens, mosses and orchids in a crowd. Creatures harboring smaller creatures, and that’s how life is, all the way down.