Dear Acorn

by Laurie Klein

How droll, to wear a thatch-work cap

in your unmade bed, half-strewn

with crumpled leaves. Were you

your mother’s favorite

shrug, earthward, tumbled

between the seasonal cleave

and leaving? Huzzah,

feral tickle of taproot, encoded

with primeval fizz! Little scuffed nut,

your essential self, denuded,

rockets forth—one shoot

amid the forest graveclothes,

as if all you are may yet erupt,

may devolve or burgeon, dazed

as a spindle splintering

into rungs, arms and legs,

yet brash with sap, dreaming

the chair, turned against

each year’s lathe,

like any artisan, becoming all throne.

Time-lapse video of an acorn sprouting underground, filmed over 8 months, by Neil Bromhall