Felled
love is fallen upon me
like cutting down a tree
to make better light
with my whole body
I appease my desire
to be nobody
but I see how fanatic tenants
would garden on so little ground
being almost starved
Poems on the topic: tree
Poems on the topic “tree” on Poets.by.
Where we sat
with great ease
the oak lives or dies
Hearing voices
I hear nothing
but a great tree
the voices that have
been with me all my life
crowd into the crown
an oratory of disorder
compelling hope for the future
like an idle boy
looking in our faces
to see who we might be
Convention
to see how everybody
turns like the green
blind corn
while we clamber
among the trees
losing ourselves
in a small room
all bewildered
seeing how
they are there
without knowing almost
what to do but have
the outside killed
and ready up beds
in the same room
Forest fire
an unexpected mouth
fire comes to eat the bark and takes all
with the greatest meekness
and is as thin as ever
after supper
Horse sense
a horse head in a tree
showed me the whole mystery of abuse
we understand backward
dying more of envy than true love
kill other persons
but let the rules be
Oak woods
winter forest—
the vast iron-work of time called trees
Terminal
alone in the west
her father is now every day
meeting with the end
a tree in a corner
would sing of water
Loose lips sink ships
In the coffee house,
talk is a great wind.
Trees blow down
and we have letters from the forest.
A thousand oaks walk to Brampton
in the news:
they make a good tale, thieves
that rob us of time.
Sinking Valley
the longer you gaze at the face
of a limestone cliff
the more beasts
begin to emerge
a puzzle of muzzles
a marl of snarls
don’t call them angelic
they’re not here for you
convening as if
to meditate on a corpse
where the creek makes a brief
above-ground appearance
oh white-breasted nuthatch
with your anxiety song
who’s to say what’s real
in a valley full of sinkholes
Encore
insects of smoke
slick as silkworms
weaving their own
winding sheets
a warmish night brings
them out again
those that still chirp
those that still trill
out of sheer habit
by now i suppose
i remember one of
today’s enigmas
i was waved at
by a dead leaf
attached to an unrelated
dead tree
Reduction
stars stare back
through bare branches
great beasts of foliage
gone to ground
rustle in the night
like restless currency
with nowhere to hide
the trees go dormant
to dream shadow lives
as modern dancers
now that it’s
too cold for snakes
who will caress the air
with lightning tongues
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