How Trees Grow

Laura Lush
From:   The First Day of Winter. (Ronsdale Press, 1997).

Between bark and wood, the secret cambium
layers keep growing. Each dark ring adding a new
layer of wood to the older wood.
(As if what grows new will never have to suffer.)
But it�s the darker interior portion, the heartwood
that deceives the most. Even the hollow trees, leafy impostors,
go on living year after year.
How do such things continue?
It�s because, like all great survivors, the living is done
on the outside,
in the tenuous outer few inches of trunks
until they are found out, until some storm breaks them.
But for now, they are everywhere, dusting the hills
with their lush green tresses,
so tall and woman-thick, fruit-heavy
with plum and peach. Their hearts tucked
in dark spidery knolls.
In each of the seasons, trees are the only thing
worth looking to.
Listen to the trees. They are never wrong.

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