The Whiteblood Vine

#26

By this cinder track, a whiteblood vine
Entangles a towering sycamore
In mockery of human error.
The parasite winds the tree’s spine,
Cleaving to rigidity it lacks,
Like a mind, faithful to facts.
From rooted stem, slim tendrils twine
Up and around every limb,
Grip a higher twig and climb—
Twig to limb, then twig, in stair-step line.
The creeper spreads its mesh;
Greenery sags, desiccated flesh.
The vine and sycamore combine
To create what they undermine.

The Tree of Crows (Caspar David Friedrich)

#25

Only one is firmly perched on its branches.
The others appear to have been scared off,
Or are they all arriving for the night?
We can't be sure which leaves or advances.
No murder of, but a chaos -- none paired off
Like swans or cardinals -- scattered in flight,
Lines in the sky like these thinning limbs,
A picture of someone's desperate screams.
The trajectories of crows are mere whims,
The tree will draw in in orderly streams.
Don't you believe it. The explosion of lines,
Both bird and twig, are devoid of symmetry,
Like thought we can speak, but not define.
Is it a tree of crows or a crow of a tree?