I learn their names
because sound-shaped relation
is how to greet each tree,
which steps from a generic green
by name to something more particular
and so becomes remembered, known.

Naming is taming but more:
seeing otherness intact;
so different, and yet alive
by the same unlikely conditions.

Naming them is taking
my place among them.

Words step more sure-footed
into a new-old world.


II

Familiar, though half a world away,
the smell of forest. Here, sweet:
honey-suckle, perhaps.
But also resin-bleeding trees -
firs and fallen branches shifting,
crackling softly in the sun.

Leaves punctuate the light
as birds define the air
with trills like late penny-whistles'
absorbed contentment;
dark calls and fluted heights
tease the wind and ear to prodigal silence.

And from the green, words of a different time
well up and take their meaning back;
the mind's tendrils turn tentative roots;
the air is less a stranger than it was.