Mast Years

Some seasons, the trees turn out

Overabundance together. The years are variable.

Mast Years conspicuously cap the ground

With hearty spheres of crunching sound

As nuts as seeds. The notes

Play percussion in songs sung steadily

In a rhythm that reveals life

In its yields. The Mast Years

Rarely live back-to-back. Curiously, most often

The wheel of predator and prey

Turn on temperate and dry springs

That boast the most tree blooms.

The right breezes before open flowers

Purpose the pollen to a fortune

Expanded as victual, on the earth,

Where too much, too quickly, spoils

For no lack of hunger. Full

Forests are foretold in the seeds

Nature has farmed and fertilized. After

All has been gleaned, the predators

Become the prey. The wheel turns.

The expansive and contractive world remembers

Uniform days until the Mast Years

Return to remind—life is change.