DAILY PHOTO: Live Oaks in Coliseum Square Park, New Orleans
4

legs in leaf litter,
garden lanterns catch light
that pierces bare woods.

bare branches,
in the Winter forest,
look frost-covered.

So many hills I have seen
That grow so soft and thick and green.
Though jagged rocks sit down below
The grass and shrubs and weeds that grow
Through cracks and gaps, in mud patches --
Sprawling wide from tight-knit batches
That stone cannot constrain or kill.


through the Autumn,
one tree holds leaves longer,
then drops them faster.

one strange tree
curls like a question mark:
Autumnal forest.

There was a Cambodian archaeologist
who dug up temples in jungles – get the gist.
But one day his dig,
under a Strangler Fig,
got him strangled… or so claimed the botanist.