Ode to the Spruce

Beside the sun’s still dying light,

is the bleeding ink of night.

With the traipsing serene spruce

of early boreal winter,

November’s ready gems.

Beside the whorled branches low,

and over the hill’s brow,

the left-over fragrance of frosty mornings,

and dry crisp afternoons

rose with the night. . .

The ocean before us,

rife with life,

as this line of spruce will tell,

witnesses to linen shells,

mollusks, crabs, and barnacles,

curated in tide pools

like seed wings.

O spruce, with nuances of green and gold,

has broken every metal mold,

you rise the ancient of the earth,

and here, your song still stings.

Cremated, our brittle bones,

are buried ’neath your fragile cones.

The shape of your character

leaves a botanical imprint on my mind.

There is no one with quite such

windy boughs,

as to collect friends as well as enemies,

as the finds of a glass blower’s moon.

The snow falls lightly

with an ice-cold rigor,

glossing on its sheen and

diluting the ever-green.

– Emily Isaacson, new poetry 2023

Last week's poem in its entirety.