The Fury Tree

Those who can't forget the past are condemned to repeat it.
Memories are the only ghosts declarative poets
Will ever know. They grow in the soil in the far garden
Not far from the fury tree, whose roots have found the compost,

Long worms, old middens, mushrooms, forgiveness, sorrows and all.
There was a time when bears would have snuffled through this debris,
When Ratatosk the chattering squirrel would have dug gossip
And carried it out of the teeth of decaying dragons

To scamper up the high branches and natter at eagles
In that curiously cheeky way of well-evolved prey.
But now the best stuff is picked, the rest hardly more than duff.
Even the fungi and slime molds have fruited and blown on.

I'm so far from equilibrium, it's a miracle
Anything could be precariously alive as me,
Patch of dirt so deep in the woods, only the long roots
Of the tree that was never supposed to be can reach me.

Even the warm, decomposing narrative bits I was
Are so small now they don't depend on hope of consumption.
I'm so alive now, so buried, so little left to tell,
Tap-root rotted at last, nothing fine snails could buy or sell.