Mulberry

You have towered here leaning half over the wall all my awareness years before I knew what silkworm was or China I felt your berries pulp under my feet tracked your purple all over grandmother’s carpet a sapling planted by some sea captain to make shade for a future This winter you lost one of  your long low branches to a backed-up car and the old woman who has known you all her life wept at the split wood Your bark is wrinkled more deeply than any face you live so slowly do our voices sound to you like the fluttering of  paper moth wings do we seem rootless holding fast to the anchor of  the saddest things