Black Poplars

How I discovered the black poplars;
how I hadn’t heard their massive roar –
 
twenty-five years working on the house
while they’d stood by the green river
 
just the other side of the broken-down fence
and through the willow tangle —
 
how I’d never sneaked through there before:
all this rose gusting through me
 
as I crept down and slithered
grabbed a twisted-over branch
 
and stood under the host of leaves
all-praising and gospelling
 
among the dazzle of underleaf
like Atlantic gulls on a gale-swept stack
 
cascading around its stillness.
But let that be … impressions, expressions ….
 
Just allow me a standing, a location,
an alignment to the pounding question
 
of how my day runs out like a harpoon
yet explodes into uncertainty
 
while trees stream an earthy purpose.
How they ascend one-pointed into a blue 
 
that self-presents; a resounding
that descends to the root:
 
thick seething soil, and nothing separate.
And how that spreads out, hushing.