What looks at first like rotten fruit,

hung round the maple's slender trunk,

we know's a tortured cluster of

malignancies where cells grow drunk

with larvae, mites, or fungus, worms,

with virus or bacteria,

and multiply as tumors, bulge

of goiters, awful excess growths.

But when you look at all the gross

disfigurements at closer range

you see the beauty of distortion,

the sculpture of disease, the strange

and replicating work the tree

is not supposed to yield, a flowery

production so grotesque it seems

a kind of miracle in wood

that makes this sapling both unique

and memorable by virtue of

its suffering swollen sores and scars,

the warts that are its finest art.