The gates to nothingness

 

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