John C. Mannone

THE DOGWOOD

Do you think there's someplace where we can meet that's not in silence and not in sound?
—Children of a Lesser God (1986)

You can only hear the silence
in the wind. The tree sways
its arms, crossing them, fingers
moving in the weave of its hands,
as if to sign. You can read
the quaking of leaves telling us
the quiet truth — we are not
the children of a lesser God.

Inside my mind, I see your soul
and the color of your words
that you translate for me. I feel
the texture of their meaning
and hear the rocks cry out with us

This tree, too, reads words to me,
to my fingers running over its trunk,
and Braille branches, over invisible
veins in the leaves; it whispers
in the flowers. I hear it bleed.

John C. Mannone, a professor of physics and nuclear consultant in east Tennessee, is widely published. Some of his poetry is published (or will appear) in Iodine Poetry Journal, Thrift Poetic Arts Journal, Bat Creek Journal, Astropoetica, as well as in anthologies: eVokability: The Walking Project and Knoxville Christmas 2008.