If she-oak cone fruit were trope of your eye

light from the tap of her watery roots

would make forests in your hollow brain

and renew in you a lush geometry 

of space and time; your brune iris opening

at dawn, blood-lit to the heart of things

imagined almost as you are; for the pith

of sense that turns her cone in your fingers

marks the tell of its filigree spiral real—

a drop of amber laid in gold, its glyphs

marking time; count them as she casts her

seasonal runes on barren ground, each

a honeycomb for second sight; you forage

her rough fruit as rows of beaks appear

 

opening in each pod a choir for hunger

carved by shadow in light birds never see

or feed; for she-oak cones are icons

in your image for children made,

a bonsai batch of gilded pineapples 

for a dollhouse plot, turned out in tiny

hand grenades; leaves like feathers

in salt air whisper her she-oak turning

as kids sway up on playground swings

cars with trailer hulls park between

lines on Brighton shore; the wind hums

in high masts in a marina of hovering

gulls: from loamy sand you will pluck

and pocket figures of spent light