Poem for the New Year

The squirrel says: the trees in which I have slept are the color of the sun. Leafless now and clear all likely pathways. The tree peers bleary-eyed through every scar that used to be a leaf, she is stiff and cold and full of old voices. I rub my face and neck against her bark: wake up! My tail trembles. I am rainwater running up and down the trunk, from tree to tree I am wind leaping, making the treetops sway. Every possible gulf of space is spanned by a possible branch, look! I can taste the kernels at the tips of possible twigs. And within me, now, too, sunlight on branches. Aching blue sky of January. Cries of thirst.