What Happens in Church

Another mudfunked Sunday, singletrack tripping

nine miles through the leafdeep and flat

fall light, not tumbling, somehow, over rocks

or roots, lungs sucking sweet oxygen

from the crystal, heart thundering red diatribes

the cardinals marry their carols to.

Your head is mostly empty, but your legs are full

of zoom, so you hurdle without thinking

the fallen body of a birch, which Saturday late

in a carnival of wind, gave up its forever bending

and finally went for broke. You have no idea

if it fell in a tirade of roots ripping, its knotted

torso torn from glacial till, or if slipping

from soil, it let go this earth with a satisfied sigh.

You know only that you’ll never speak

the language of softwoods. You’ll never ease

the grieving of worms. The mushrooms build

their bookshelves where birch bark used to be,

recite the natural histories with tongues

of rot and flame. Leaves float down in a ringing

of bells that only the salamanders can hear.

You pluck one from the breeze, hold it to your ear.