The willow oak has written in it an ink of time-underlayment. I say the word emeritus and the wind-rubbed coppery surface touches my eyes like a worn rug. Corded by limbs to a base in soil it recovers those years of toil that layered other leaves in another place. The library’s vellum and coffee still drug my memory, like Gothic walls and trees above. There I and my gnarled masters strove,