Under the leaves where you'd be lying,

life makes woods of Tennessee

as leaves and loam grow down, drying

brown from chlorophyll and tree.

Needles that loosen, where you'd be,

range to the ground or graze down

the tunneled heights so quietly

they have not gathered. On the ground,

under the needles where earth would like you to break

and drown,

tunnels fill the earth like foam,

the sentried, calm land breaks down,

and fungi blacken into loam.

Would seas of insects wash those brown

and buttressed skies with catacombs?

Would leaves the trees gave up to spin

through the teeth of their waiting, branching comb

weave you back again? You would begin

to rot into those trees whose forest we have been,

where root hair cells would take you in,

where I'd thread through if I could break

out from the trees that forest in

my branch with leaves, where I would

make ground for the earth if I could,

take sounds of all your unheard trying

down with me to fall, and break,

ranging the tunnels that are only dying,

circling so slowly, circling them, and crying.