Ich habe viele Brüder in Sutanen
im Süden, wo in Klöstern Lorbeer steht.
      -Rainer Maria Rilke

I see a stand of tall trees here,
limbs all reaching up until
their leaflessness entwines,
a pattern on an argyle sweater.

These are not my sisters,
the scrub pines and pin oaks
of South Jersey, where even
the deciduous trees hold on

to a few leaves until spring.
No, these trees are more trusting,
or more careless. Nothing is held
back in this season of letting go.

Last week, at home, I looked out
at the greenish-gray dusk
of the hurricane-to-come.
Pale patches of lichen grew

on the rough oak bark. The lichen-
emblems glowed in that filtered light.
They blazed, marking the trail
to where I would rather be.

Those oak boughs at home
aren’t supple enough to be
divining rods, yet they dowse
the deep well of a wild new

happiness.  Pain is not averted
by delay. When spring comes,
pale green leaves will finally
force the dead brown ones

on the pin oaks to let go.
Fragile, feeble leaves will
emerge as well from the tight
red buds of the tall wastrel trees.

About This Poem:

• This poem was written on the first weekend of November 2012.
• I remember the exact date because I wrote it immediately after Hurricane Sandy while in Central Jersey at a Peter Murphy Quickie Getaway. There were at least two people on that Getaway who’d been severely impacted by the storm, yet they left the mess at home to come and write.
• I had just completed October Madness in Cindy King’s class — 30 poems in 31 days — so my writing felt unusually fluid. (I wrote “Specific Gravity” that same weekend.)
• I included an epigraph by Rilke to explain my title and first line. The translated words mean: I have many brothers in cassocks/in the South, where the laurel stands in cloisters.
• My poem first appeared in Peregrine Journal.