A single speck of red
Among the bobbing green of the maple tree,
once like the thin crusts on a ***** palette
but made fresh again with swirls of silver-gray and heavy, platting strokes,
Flashes in and out of view
As the branches sway like a chorus of hands,
blocking the red
which is as brilliant as an answer called out
because he who spoke out of turn not only
knows
the answer, but feels it
and could say it so much that perhaps after a while you'd feel it also
But never quite as much
as the one who has a single chance to say the name
of the lost, forbidden, resonant oak
so elegantly dancing tantalizing inches away,
The kind that tear the sinews in the reaching past them,
snap the bark in a shriek and let forth torrents into the open plain
until there is nothing
but drowning