POEM TREE IN AUTUMN

Every poet needs a poem tree.  I drafted this about ten years ago and it just recently resurfaced in one of my journals.  I'm open to any and all help.  It does seem to wander a bit.  What do you see?  Dewell

POEM TREE IN AUTUMN

The old Ponderosa Pine
in my front yard stands solid
against weather's worst.
It blocks my view of Mount Pitt,
challenges me to find
the poems it harbors.

It carpets my lawn
with toast-brown needles,
chunks of dark bark,
cones big as my head;
plugs my nose with pollen.

It sharpens the wind for winter,
teaches me new words for loss
in the language of nature.

Under a steel-wool mewling sky
birds rest in its branches
and await the sun's signal.

If I sit quietly and listen,
it sings of autumn,
drops a casual phrase to my pen.

-Dewell H. Byrd

Dewell

I really like the "poem tree," though I'd rather have a money tree.

My contributions are small:

1.  The "it" of the last line in stanza one takes me to the Mountain that holds the poems.
2.  Stanza two seems to be about visual, yard waste until the last line.
3.  Wasn't sure what to do with "mewling."  I would chose one or the other adj for that line.
4.  Seems like the last stanza is in opposition to the "work/challenge" involved in stanza one.  (Perhaps "harbors" is not in the metaphor pool of this poem.)
5.  Maybe all verbs can point to the "drop" of the line in the closing stanza?

I need to write one of these "poem tree" poems.

Thanks! 

Good job, Dewell. Love the metaphors. Wouldn't change a thing.
Title is appropriate, and your poemis well articulated.

I understand the first stanza, and I expect the following stanzas to show me poems you have found in the poem tree, but then you go another direction.  You talk about needles, pollen, bark, birds.  Then on the last stanza, we are back to writing and poems.  What dropped from this tree?  What poetry blew off the tree?  What came in Spring, summer, autumn, winter from this tree? I understand the visual images.  Just wondering if you might want to dig deeper.  Dewell, there is probably a reason you put it away for 10 years.  Thanks for pulling it up and out and sharing it.