How to Eat a Pine Tree

Shallow focus photography of brown pinecones

suck it down from the top
blending dirt and wind, stir
with birds’ breath and feathers

shake it like a rain cloud, seeded
and skinless, an unoccupied color,
bear off beneath its bark,
for a million hours

filter its sap perpendicular to thirst
and turn under its canopy
until dizzy and you can’t find
your forefinger

cling like drunken squirrels
scoring yesterdays into its branches
then drift from floor to floor
visiting coned neighbors

steep the sharpness of its
needles with a saturated tongue
digesting answers that can
only be found in phloem

 

Poem by Rebecca Surmont

Rebecca Surmont has a secret love of corn fields, rivers, and trains. Living in the Midwest invites exploration of the seasons and cycles of life and this is often expressed in her work. Her poems have been in Topical Poetry, Ekphrastic Review, New Verse News, Silver Birch Press, Minneapolis’ Southwest Journal, and the anthology, Seasons, by Trolley Car Press. She lives in MN.