The White Pines Remember

I think the trees remember us still
the way we used to hurry
along mossy trails,

our hot thrumming bodies
sap-filled in brief summer.
Seedlings cast off and unrooted,

we lived under bright sun
and waxed leaf
and everything was possible.

What are scars, anyway?
I mean, yes, these scars
I do know,

the small rents of flesh
now stitched with sinew
on knuckles bent like roots

and I know the pale half-moon
circling my knee from where
the grinding wheel

flew loose.
A specific moment
carved into the skin.

What I mean is that
there are some scars
for which there is no name,

only the slow knitting
of your heart, winding its wound
over itself

imperfectly mending
old and unremembered
hurts.

Trees, too, have souls.
When we pass into the woods
they tell us so

wind in the branches
and then a quiet
and then the cold forest breath

settles over us
like soft needles
in snow.

The white pines
lower their weary boughs
waiting for spring.

Colleen Keefe, May 2022