Roots to Touch Sky
by Sheree Renée Thomas
Edited by Julia Rios
Copyedited by Chelle Parker
February 2019
1. The story of trees
is pressed into their flesh
and in their gnarled roots
breath
The amount of foliage overhead
can be corrected
with the amount of root tissue
below
and in the ground, the mouth of earth
under the canopy of dark and light
under the canopy of roots
and fallen leaves
lives a city of bones
and the names
that gave the bones flesh
and the flesh that gave
the names life
2. In the future
fossils give the hardened record
of half-lives, the imprint
of those worked beyond exhaustion
of shoulders grooved with
the weight of despair
of minds lost in a cave of
dreams, a record of nameless
labor, of plunder
3. Coal is made from the carbon
of ancient trees
that did not decay to powder
that did not give way
to the tyranny of oxygen
to understand this subversive resistance
is to imprint the world
with images that give rise
to its beginning and its end
to understand is
to name the nameless
4. I am here to wonder
to give up roots
to grow beyond expectation
to become both air and light
to retract, to retreat into density
to unfurl these twisting sinews
of thought
we are here to move
to be moved, we the half-lives, the past
an upturned tree with shallow roots
we emerge from the dark
reaching for light
our lives held up in the sun
like a great unlined hand
© 2019 Sheree Renée Thomas
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