Spawning in a Past Life, #1/30 2021

 When I was a tree, in a past life

Deciduous, I think, the  autumn

plucked my leaves to a bare frame

I know, because I remember this cold

The chill that peeled my bark like scales

left me shivering beside the winter stream

This is my purpose now, this stream 

the scent of home I follow, spawning life 

in the sweetwater shallows a flash of scales 

a cloud of fertility flooding into late autumn 

frenzy ignited by the onset of cold 

the chill seeping into this body’s frame

But perhaps, through a different frame 

this water was more aquifer than stream 

water seeping into the earth, fresh and cold 

absorbed through roots, rising to leaves, to life-

giving foliage that will linger into autumn 

Water through the roots, tipping the scales

drawing carbon dioxide from the air in scales 

we can’t conceive, a formula, a frame

on which to scaffold spring and summer, to autumn 

pigments capturing radiant sun

feeding ecosystems in a simple stream 

kernel of potential exploding into life 

into grazing, predation, into death in the cold

      

What would this water be without the cold 

the bite of early winter, shiver between the scales 

the brown muscles’ thrash to remind us how life 

can be a frightening thing, photos in a frame 

we do not recognize, gulps of air that stream 

across our gills and disappear into autumn

As trees we never expected to survive the autumn 

and now that we have we welcome this bitter cold 

the exhaustion of reaching the head of the stream 

No longer making sugar out of sun, our withered scales 

shedding into eddies, flaking off our withering frame 

but we bed down a new generation amidst the last throes of life

If only we could survive the autumn, shed leaves instead of scales

Photosynthesize into the cold months, over-winter as a naked frame

Dropped leaves dessicate, a nutrient stream, the foundation of all life