I heard the blackbirds singing
singing at the setting sun song
coming from the western 
edge of the vineyard and it 
struck me into stillness or
stillness struck me into it
with a resonance of sound
of sound and time in synchrony
time as a distant music drifts
with not what it is but how
lovely flowing with the long
gold glow of the slanting sun 
above ever-shifting green-to-
yellow along the parallel lines
the lines and lines of crucified 
vines under the untouched 
space of empty sky came
suddenly a memory memory 
and a question both as memory
comes sometimes unbidden
insistent so I again asked
asked the question with no answer
or more than one answer all things 
being true but still I asked the now-
memory of a pine that grows
on the canyon edge grows in
knitted granite bones grey 
hewn with brown root
grows there still except 
in memory where it resides
in a tortured form I must
question and detain as I find
in it a scarred beauty flowing 
in slow time around its native 
pain and so must ask again
ask again of experience:
Did tree split rock 
or rock split tree?