"The Clearing in the Woods" by L. E. Sissman

Behind this cabin, children, is an oak,
The nearest of the circumstantial ring
That stands and counts its rings and keeps its score
In hundreds, children, hundreds, just beyond
The picket of our eyes both day and night.
Look out this window at the clearing: it
Is daytime, and its space is limitless.
Look out this window, children, now that night
Has lain among us: nothing, you can see,
Spreads all around us in its unknit skeins.
Yet there are oaks, their torsos rife with rings
Begot of waiting, just beyond our ken,
Beyond the bourne of consciousness, where we
Lay down our senses on that unnamed day
When those oak sentries let one pass, and he
Comes straight across the clearing to take one
Of us back of beyond. No, it is true:
I know because my father told me so,
And one day, to insure that I believed
What he had said, and to preserve the state
Of things as they must be -- the cabin, then
The clearing, then the woods -- one came for him.