Gilded with petrification
Many lifecycles of man & beast anoxic lain
Drainage disinterred
From millennia-locked marshland sump
As story out of sculptor’s block revealed
This field of posts
Marks where a village clung
Encircling lakeshore’s cradling womb
The precious pull of water
These stilted pillars raised
Life from lifegiver’s mortal grasp
That finally would engulf & death preserve
Concentric whisperbreaths of Chronos’ counting
Marking each suncircle’s bloom & lull
The wide, wet, bountied curves
& thin, dry twists of paucity
Through frostcrack & sunspark & moons of dormancy
Sunstolen stretching ticks each anniversary
These necklace rondel tubes of cambium
Between drinking pith & shielding bark pushed out
Ringing the changing tempo