Serotiny

When summer finds the mountain pine
and lightning lifts the cedar,
resin stirs in honey folds,
drawn inward, held there deeper.

Thirty winters gather slow
in snowmelt, moss, and weather;
hawk-shadow drifts on granite ledge,
elk trail, stream, and heather.

High above the darkened slope,
one sealed and shining chamber
waits through June, through velvet rut,
through August dust and ember.

Then fire—

swift as wanting,
hot as blood,
climbing vein and marrow;

bark begins to breathe in flame,
old silence opening narrow.

Scale by scale
the cone gives way,
its hidden weight made lighter;

seed by seed
the mountain learns
what heat can render brighter.

So place your hand
behind my neck
where pulse and promise gather.

Some forms of love
arrive as silk and
some come dressed as weather.

Some ask softly
at the door,
with hands as light as heather.

Some arrive
with sparks asleep,
held deep inside their chamber,

sealed through ring
and resin-dark,
through seed and hidden amber—

until one touch,
one living warmth,
moves slowly through the grain,

and something
long acquainted with the dark

begins

to speak

in flame.

—Iris Lennox