Whispers of the Maple
by Xiaoly Li
Rooted deep, the ancient maple stands,
a sentinel of time, bridging earth and sky.
My palms press against its gnarled bark,
I murmur to the tree and feel
its vibrations ripple from its core to me,
a language older than humanity.
Skyler bursts through the door, lifts his head, and stirs.
His canine senses tune to unseen strings,
leaping and barking toward the silent street.
No one in sight, not yet.
How does he know—
in five minutes, my daughter's car
will arrive from a distance?
Does instinct span like maple’s might,
touching the world with roots of heart?
It mirrors a dream of mine where a lover
returned, a vision born beneath this knowing tree,
and became a reality later.
My daughter finally appears;
Skyler's joy whirls around her.
My daughter's hand meets mine.
In that touch of the bark,
past, present, and future meet—
Does everything begin
anew from the ancient tree?
a sentinel of time, bridging earth and sky.
My palms press against its gnarled bark,
I murmur to the tree and feel
its vibrations ripple from its core to me,
a language older than humanity.
Skyler bursts through the door, lifts his head, and stirs.
His canine senses tune to unseen strings,
leaping and barking toward the silent street.
No one in sight, not yet.
How does he know—
in five minutes, my daughter's car
will arrive from a distance?
Does instinct span like maple’s might,
touching the world with roots of heart?
It mirrors a dream of mine where a lover
returned, a vision born beneath this knowing tree,
and became a reality later.
My daughter finally appears;
Skyler's joy whirls around her.
My daughter's hand meets mine.
In that touch of the bark,
past, present, and future meet—
Does everything begin
anew from the ancient tree?
Xiaoly Li is a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowship Grant (2022) recipient. Her poetry collection, Every Single Bird Rising (FutureCycle Press, April 2023), was a Zone 3 Press Book Award finalist. Her poetry is forthcoming, featured, or anthologized in Crab Orchard Review, Tampa Review, Salamander, Saranac Review, Spillway, Chautauqua, Rhino, Verse Daily, and elsewhere. She has been nominated for: Best New Poets, three times a Pushcart Prize, four times Best of the Net. Her poetry collection manuscript, Between the Sun and the Moon was a finalist in the 2023 Diode Editions Book & Chapbook Contests and the Word Works' 2024 Washington Prize. She lives in Massachusetts where her photography has been shown and sold in galleries in Boston. Xiaoly received her Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and her Master’s in computer science and engineering from Tsinghua University in China.