open an eighth of an inch each night
framed by trees
that grow
exuberantly
Among the leaves
blooms of durable insects
A limb reaches out into the emptiness
seeking to make contact
then grasp
You study all this from your bed
through your night goggles
the world that continues
without us
*
The drawers of thinking won’t close
so overflowing with non-disposables
and the ambushes of memory
Nothing put away
stays in place
The sound of no longer needed
body parts
dropping to the ground
You take a tiny rake
to clean up this mental landscape
a sort of curator gardener
paying your respects
to the wakefulness
of trees
*
Not just any plant
the most sensitive of plants
bends to your touch your presence
How could it be otherwise, mimosa,
waking up
to the weeping of flower heads
and larvae
the usual worm-
chatter and
dissonant turf?
*
Cold hard-working birds
drop out of a sky
ghosted with the colors
of their disappearance
You lay a torn sweatshirt on the pyre
some poems
an empty container of Roundup
intone some prophesies
based in statistics
*
Sleeping with moon-enameled branches
and silent pulses
of missing insects
Spears of cheap pillow down
set up a battle in one ear
while the trees persist
in their refusal
to be individuals
The rhizomes that aid
and abet them
spread
*
The ceiling nods
in concert with the heads
of dried grass
rattling open your dream
Just as an imaginary Spring
was coming into bloom again
But you live in the age you live
The sound of generations
beat down on your head
using it as a drumskin of accusation
All that is broken, broken, broken
*
Out of the tree
cradling plastic
a forecast of sea
Above it
a stellar umbrella
unfolds for the 14 billionth time
Somewhere a reckoning ticks
but you aren’t listening
as you clip the eyebrow hairs
that curl down into the eyes
of the beloved
*
The notion of the soul as interiority
what crap tonight
The trees multiply the extensions
and extensions
of extensions
as metallic blankets
cover the ankles
of sleeping children
The night is loud
with the becoming of insects
the silence of plants
digesting another day’s-worth
of star material
along the fence lines
*
You get up to clear some space
on your desk of doubt
looking for a definition of love
you lost somewhere
Chains of ordinary kindness
self-perpetuating in thin air
A force that emanates radially
Now creatures free from bilateral being
are entangled in a canopy of forest-thinking
drenched in the language of rising seas
Octopi and other cephalopods
offer such appealing methods
of propulsion and perception
you are almost carried off by them
But the wind is picking up
and you are afraid of losing power
You open the windows
to feel the wet unleafing
of fixed positions
other planetary
sympathies
*
So what has been the nature of your participation?
The method of your self-dispersion?
Have you taken part in disruption
when disruption was needed?
What limits have you set for your explorations?
What floor for your excavations?
Why just there and not further?
Do you find these questions unnerving?
Is that why you are both sweating and shivering?
Am I handing you a bouquet or a prize or an opportunity?
Tell us about your position in the scheme of ecosystem services
as opposed to, say, these trees
No need to worry
This is all just for informational purposes
Now diagram the nodes of your connectivity
Don’t forget to include the burrs
on your pants today
the jet streams and the rafts
the stowaways
riding the plastic ropes of the oceans
*
Snow takes the place of leaves
among things that fall
inaudibly
All that happens
but is unheard
The desire to live inside a picture:
streams and mountains
rocks and gorges—
This is the aesthetic of detachment
Trees are to landscape
as books to decorating…
a poet says, obscene—
This is the environmental aesthetic
Another brings your attention
to the friends admiring the snow
in an era of general depravity—
The aesthetic of being together
in violent times
