Lindens, maples,
tall tulip tree and river birch,
my countrymen, my guides.

2.
Travel by window alone.
Th journey is long,
comforting even,
endless like the sky.

3.
They are the given,
the green necessities,
light and shadow
turn their leaves we read.

4.
Pound’s birthday,
he knew a thing or two
about trees,
and Valéry’s
who fled with the birds,
this very roof that shields
the sky from our curiosity.

5.
Trees do that, exactly
define what wedge of sky
we see betwixt their branches
as last night one
sliver of the prospering moon.

6.
Linden loves us,
maple feeds.
Be simple as that
I tell the child
I can’t stop being.

7.
So it comes back to me,
the real one or disguised
as Chinese sage or stout Cortez,
the desperate hoper who
soars or stumbles out
of the gate of every poem.

8.
No, it must
be tree,
I insist,
not me—
I wouldn’t even be
if not for someone else.
Go find the else.
The tree must know the way.

30 October 2022