What any tree can tell you... Ivan Lalic

WHAT ANY TREE CAN TELL YOU
by Ivan Lalic

Learn, my heart, what any tree can tell you.
How to assign its roots
to drive them right ways down into the
loosened darkness.
Not through the stone,
but round the stone.
Not into the clay,
but towards the water close at hand.
Not into the unyielding,
but into the love ready to answer
the pressure of rootlets
with a rush forcing up a ringed access
to the fork and beyond,
with an upland rise of branches
repeating the pattern of a nether thirst.