The house was built around the tree,
not afterward, to hide a beam.
Its roots required a geometry;
the path bent where the builders drew a seam.
I open the window for the evening.
Branches lean into linen, brass, and air.
Support is not the same as stopping movement.
The ring must hold without becoming snare.
Along the bench, the blades have ceased their shining.
A basket keeps the twigs that would not mend.
No garden grows by beginning;
some work is learning what to leave, or end.
Yet on the trunk, beside an fracture,
a green insistence finds the sun.
The wall receives its shadow without capture.
The room is made for growing, never done.
I used to draw the roof before the doorway,
then wonder why the branches bowed.
Now stone gives way; the arch grows wider.
A shelter does not need a crowd.
Let violet glass admit the weather.
Let water reach the soil beneath the floor.
A knot can gather things together
and still leave room for what they were before.
Outside, the light withdraws from the hillside.
Inside, leaves outlasts the hour.
I close the tools, not possibilities,
and leave the tree its unrecorded power.
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