Redwood

The mineral kin would not know me now,
I used to be a cone-coiled code, I mean,
I was biding, to flicker into joy.

Each day I emerge a little, root deeper,
canopy wider, longing burnishing
my hardening trunk.

Distance from the ground has become
a way of reminding myself,
how the earth turns her swaying tilt,

and I still have years to stand in the forest,
my tongue speaks leaf peripheries,
words filling into fine cones,

in the obedient cycle we use to build our children.
I still need the astonishment of rain,
the challenge of a wild flame’s tongue.

So I can do my work, silent as snow,
knowing wonder might look like this,
and dream I am glimmering into fragments of sky.

Alison Jones is the author of two poetry pamphlets, Heartwood (2018) and Omega (2020). Her work has appeared in Ink Sweat and Tears, Poetry Ireland Review, Proletarian Poetry, Barren Poetry, The Broken Spine, Field Magazine, Spelt Magazine, and Dust Poetry, along with many more.