The Live Oak’s New Dress

The live oak has put on a new dress.

The old one she flung on the ground

was done for, crisp and brown, 

a consumed fabric—

rattling shards that ran on concrete.

But now, Mrs. Live Oak, round as a ball,

has a new one, fluffy as sunlight or air,

if sunlight and air can somehow be fluffy,

(they have to be; they are in this dress),

a dress that is not even fully green,

but yellow-green, a pale shade of Spring,

on its way to dark and rich.

She thinks she will have a bird in it then.

Once, in a dress like that, years ago,

a hawk sat pulling a pigeon apart,

and that was one bloody beautiful brooch,

ruby drips in the shade on one bough.

God! She was a gorgeous creature that day!

And this day too! She can feel it. She knows—

the faintest of greens as it sucks on light,

sunlight before it is fully at home.