Villanelle: Redwoods; Rodent Neutral!

Redwoods

Cathedrals come to mind when the soft light,
Refracted through the needles like stained glass,
Leaks down from these great trees from a great height.

Their bark is thick and grooved and will not blight.
Their fallen fronds, acidic, allow no grass;
Cathedrals come to mind when they shape light.

I look up and the tops are out of sight.
My mind cannot encompass their great mass;
Light leaks down through these trees from a great height.

I love an oak, I love its tortured might;
Maples burn gold and rose when leaves must pass;
But they are not cathedrals to the light.

Straight as a rod, vertically impolite
To man, who feels a bug beside their mass,
The light leaks down through these from a great height.

I want to stay here like an anchorite
And worship at their base while all things pass.
Cathedrals come to mind when the soft light
Leaks down from these great trees from a great height.


Like yesterday, it’s a good sign when Dr. Chaffin writes about things outside himself. In general I am no introvert, but depression forces me into a smaller and smaller space until I’m afraid to speak with my wife, until making coffee becomes an overwhelming burden.

But you have been there with me, and your support—even if only the knowledge that I am being read, that I am not simply a mute smudge on the windshield of the universe—has meant a lot. (Did that last over-the-top trope remind you of Roc McKuen?)

My new psychiatrist was quite knowledgeable, to my relief. He is the second psychiatrist I’ve seen in my life who knows more about medications than I do. In view of my recent improvement since doubling the Seroquel, he opted not to change a thing, but asked me to return in a month or call him if I start to cycle down again. What’s interesting is that in this small community I remember him from the men’s retreat. There I told him that he emanated the most joy of anyone I met at the affair; he just smiled back. As I said to Kathleen, a happy psychiatrist is either very healthy or in denial. I think my new shrink is actually healthy. Amazing. So few psychiatrists are. Naturally, as that rare, truly competent doctor, to get an appointment with him takes over two months. But he has a walk-in clinic when he is on call, and that’s how I was able to see him.

Not much else to report. Kathleen is under the weather but I am never allowed to give details. She has a stronger sense of privacy than I. My sense of privacy has been blown out by multiple hospitalizations and events, if I described them, that are beyond embarrassment. What otheres think of me is none of my business. I tell the truth and let the chips fall where they may.

I have a better poem on redwoods than the villanelle above, and I’ll post it below. In shape it resembles a redwood by design. See the poet George Herbert for more such poems.


At rodent neutral?

CE

Red
wood
Standing
on the burnt
tripod of your
fire-hollowed base
like a Saturn rocket
waiting for launch,
your faraway limbs
radiate like bent spokes
bearing needles tighter
than a comb’s teeth to hide
your crown like the face of a god,
just as you hide the sun
from the laurel and the fir.
What light you spare
won’t penetrate the bleached
rust carpet of needles below where
blue jays strut, squawking indecorously
beside your unearthly stillness.
Your peat-red bark is grooved as if
some prehistoric cat had clawed it lengthwise.
Your roots, big as pythons, suck up the silt from
all those moss-furred wrecks that splinter
into orange sawdust, your ancestors.
Without them you’d go hungry in this rain forest
flushing minerals faster than roots can taste.
Only the outermost of your two thousand rings
is alive, a thin cylinder of cells
wrapping your heartwood
like foil. Your strength
comes from your core
and your core is dead.
Your seeds, smaller than
a fly’s wings, share
a lotto’s chance of sprouting
in your shade. More often
your own shoots encircle you
as you die to feed them,
rising in a cathedral
cool and still and vertical
around your stump’s altar.

(published in Mi Poesias)