Poem: Tongue-tied leaves

Why shouldn’t all things be oracular
for one whose words
get swallowed or perch
on the tip of the tongue?

Tongue-tied leaves,
pleading in sworls
of orange, green, and crinkled brown;

Beech-bark maps
of coasts, swamps, broken lands,
the wen or burl of settlement;

Ridges spelling out lines for the sky,
and even clouds, old tricksters,
dropping their sticklebacks and mouses’ ears to say,
Hear me down there, listen and
lend me what you have.