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A Tree’s Mirrored Self
Paulann Petersen

“As above, so below.”
—an axiom from alchemy

Groping, reaching,
drinking, your roots seek—
in darkness—what’s chthonic.
Hard. Dark mineral.
Watery dissolution.

As underpinning,
you prepare the way,
creating the shape
your other half will take
above ground.

Trunk, branch, twig and leaf
mirror your under-self.
Visible spirit of air,
you suckle sunlight,
sip dioxide,
tongue the ethers.

Tossing dapple-shadow
down, you are a breathing,
creak-and-sough soul
clamped to the earth
by a mirror-twin
busy delving beneath.
Creature ground-locked.
Creature soaring.

—
Paulann Petersen was Oregon Poet Laureate from 2010 to 2014, and she has seven full-length collections, most recently One Small Sun from Salmon Press of Ireland

Her poems have appeared in a number of journals and anthologies, including Poetry, The New Republic, Catamaran, and Prairie Schooner. The Latvian composer Eriks Esenvalds chose one of her poems as the lyric for a choral composition that’s now part of the repertoire of the Choir at Trinity College, Cambridge.

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