A Book is Like a Tree

Busy readers,
a book and a tree hold on to Mother Earth,
a book takes hold of another book by the roots.
Books and trees are my novias. I'm in love,
it does not matter if they are underage
or just hanging on to dear life.

In different parts of the forest,
books and trees stand alone,
a book in the sunlight and green rain
of the imagination.
Evergreen books are dormant in summer,
deciduous books praise autumn colors.
Books have nests, branches, twigs, sentences,
some without the punctuation of woodpeckers.
Trees have stanzas and paragraphs,
Buddhist trees bear fruit: holy words.
I have not forgotten books in runaway brooks,
tongues in trees.

When readers of trees wanted more truth
after ballads, novels grew.
I swear: in a tree and a book in Spain
prose, a lance of words fought windmills.
War is the opposite of truth. A palpable hit!
Eventually novels and forests grew
in the thickets: Samuel Richardson, Jane Austen,
Hugo, Proust, Joyce, Dickens, Melville,
Morrison, I can't forget four Russians.
Come laugh with me, I'm a traveler
who studies forests, trees and b0oks.

The Ginkgo tree was first in China.
I found Luo Guanzhong's Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
I noticed a trout in China looks just like a trout
in Scotland, the Catskills, the Urals.

I swam in the headwaters of the Nile
under palm trees and hieroglyphics.

Novels and trees
shout and whisper what it's all about,
the four hemispheres of everywhere.
Careful, careful the best
the worst of every living thing is dangerous.

Trees and words honor the language
suck the tit of Mother Nature.
Existence, existence, existence.
Trees are neighbors
not adversaries or heathens.