Mulberry

You have towered here

leaning half over the wall

all my awareness

years before I knew

what silkworm was or China

I felt your berries

pulp under my feet

tracked your purple all over

grandmother’s carpet

a sapling planted

by some sea captain to make

shade for a future

This winter you lost

one of  your long low branches

to a backed-up car

and the old woman

who has known you all her life

wept at the split wood

Your bark is wrinkled

more deeply than any face

you live so slowly

do our voices sound

to you like the fluttering

of  paper moth wings

do we seem rootless

holding fast to the anchor

of  the saddest things