by Carla Schwartz, from the chapbook Refuge:

Bifurcation

               An arborist once told me the trait                                                         of a tree splitting into two trunks
is a kind of gentic mutation, so if you see a tree                                             like this one, split at the base,            
   this oak, at the crest of this esker,                                                more likely than not you’ll see
another, and yet another—and here, there                                                  within 10 ft of each other, I know
                                       from the dried brown leaves scattered                   on the ground around each bifurcated base.
that the buds way above, the fresh green color                             of spring, belong to oaks,                     
which, atop this esker walled with trees,                             my refuge for this afternoon,
                                    gives me hope                                  that in this dichotomous time
      of before and after, positive and negative,                    symptoms or none, masks or scoffs,
ventilators or quarantine, this time of food lines            in the morning or slim pickings
in the afternoon, this time of safety or hugs, of      Zoom presence or no preseence,
of missing life or missing death,
I can stand with these oaks,
twinned at the fundament,
living a healthy life,
and listen to the water
rushing over the dam,
to the wind wishing
through my hair,
my heavy breaths
insisting I am here.

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