Incomunicado

It feels like the train itself cuts
a singular way through risings of dynamite
stones and slime trees, but I know
it is the tracks, must have been
workmen, before.
trees breathe closely over
shadowing my page, to prove all communication
is tempered by that which goes before.
Can there be comfort in a solitary tree
standing whitely in a rumpled field?
Slanting afternoon sun knows there is
poetry here, in spite of people
who play games of 'mine, not yours'
who blame the agency on the act,
though it must have been somebody's father's tree.
Scars in the land look like ditches and property lines
of the old home, and "je me souviens"
though it was a battle of wills
and the cruel surprise of memory.
"memory" means, only in thought--
"bread" to you, "fire" to me, "apple"
to Milton's Adam. Remember from these lessons
that the author is not Adam,
even though the tree still holds the sprouting chin
of earth between the thumb and finger of meaning,
peering into the eyes of the Word.