LARCH

Growing up in Baltimore’s concrete and brick,

Borrowing books at Enoch Pratt about the natural world

- I mean all the natural world besides crabapples and cockroaches -

I read the word “larch” in stories, and tried to imagine

What kind of tree it could be, and what kind of forests and mountains and rivers,

And what kind of world it was that moved those writers,

A world that seemed like magic and dragons.

Now on a train, racing between one city and another,

Glacier Park in Montana materializes out of the dark night,

Frosts and mists lifting imperceptibly into the morning,

“Those are deciduous conifers,” my seatmate says.

Bright gold needles on dark brown trunks aglow with their own light

Rise above the dark green forest like blossoms, like spires,

Can they be trees? They seem like magic and dragons

Who beseech their Sun God to rise,

With their burnt offering breath rising around them,

Bright creatures bellowing praise as She tops the black peaks.

I am moved to write whatever I can about them –

Magic. Dragons. Larch.

by Lori Martin, October 24, 2015