When an Image Haunts You

I love the Sierra, and spend much of every summer in the mountains. I have favorite walks, several along meadows ringed with huge trees. Over many years, I've watched changes, some gradual, like small trees encroaching on the meadow, shrinking it, and some sudden--like a tree that falls. The image that stuck with me and became an obsession was the hole left by the root-mass when a tree is torn from the ground. I interviewed biologists and did research--but could not answer one nagging question. That's how this poem came to be.

Speaking of Words

When a tall pine's fall

rips its roots from the ground,

the tangled wall it raises

is called root-wad. The act

of falling and tree that fell,

we know as tree-throw.

But no word exists for

the gaping mouth of earth

the roots leave yawning

open--no word at all denotes

that place of ragged edges

and the empty hollow

they surround, in a single

apt expression. As if to fill

an empty cup of loss,

torn edges crumble and sides

give way, and what could not

be named begins to disappear.

Wind and rain tamp humus in

while years of needles fall.

What's left is a circle

of spongy duff, where hiker's feet

sink down and spring back

from widowed ground.

--Megan Anderson Bohigian c 2018