By Mary Alice Dixon 

By the river the live oak
sings me to touch 
my tongue to her wounds, 
to trace the cross 
carved in bark by moonlight 
and bites of a ghost 
who remembers 
the lynching,
man bones still twisting 
in limbs 
holding memories and moss.

My tongue tastes blood
in the bark, feels time splintered
in a branch, broken  
that falls to earth at the touch
of my lips, planting a gift 
of the holy ghost 
who lives in the heartwood,
standing witness, sky-etching
the unforgetting.

My tongue silenced in seeing
the voice of the tree. 

~~~

Mary Alice Dixon lives in Charlotte, NC, where she grows sunflowers in cow manure. A co-editor of Kakalak, a journal of poetry and art, she is a past finalist for the NC Poetry Society Poet Laureate Award,and a winner of the NC Writers’ Network Randall Jarrell Poetry Competition. Mary Alice also leads Grief Writing Workshops for hospice. Her chapbook is Snakeberry Mamas: Words from the Wild(Charlotte Lit Press, 2025). Find her at maryalicedixon.com.