Quaking Aspen, or dendrophilia

by Matty Layne Glasgow

naked boy
two hundred years young
winter stripped you—
wig gone
blond leaves blown
into the valley
you are a smooth one
now
bark slick as
winter’s icy lick
tonguing your
tremblebranch
& barkquiver
until you come
again—flourish
of green sheen
budding from
your white skin
the years in dark
streaks across your
thick trunk
i feel your weak
sway today
let my hot breath
make you flicker
this morning—
a flame on our ridge
beneath this
sallow-hazed
dawn
bury my purple
lips
in your light
fading
bark
 
 

Pando

for Irán Garcia 
 

Mi amor, if you ever find yourself in Utah, look for Pando.

He is a Trembling Giant of a man, a Quaking Aspen of a tree.

Trust me, guapo, he knows the way I love you, how I’d spread

myself across one hundred acres, y seis más if need be, just to

give you un bosque—forty thousand trunks bound by the same

root. He’s watched for eighty thousand years—before your god

walked this earth, before I buried mine in la tierra roja—how I

have waited for this lasting warmth, for the fires to stave off all

those skinny-ass conifers. My heart is that clonal colony queen,

all thirteen million pounds of him, so I’m heavy for you too, my

love. All the suckering that got us here, every trunk a new root,

every root a new stem—you always make us rise again & again.

But maybe, you shouldn’t go to Utah. Maybe seeing it there, all

old & heavy, tangled & coming out of the ground might just be

too real. They say the deer are too hungry, the bark beetles too

many, y root rot y cankers y lo demás. They say he’s dying. How

could such a trembling, quaking giant rise & spread from a single

seed, then go? When he hollows, we will watch him fall trunk by

trunk until we bury him with our gods. I will tell you I adore you,

& you will ask, Cuánto? Hear me from my roots: Mi amor, Pando.