Classic Poem

The trees top out
and from there on it's sky —
the same sky everywhere
the same trees even;
or the same gesture: Goodbye

as if someone or something
had gone, and had left them there
pointing after it, waving perhaps. . . .
Oh sure, it would be the wind
if they did that. There's no
transaction at all, you can say.

But there is one, with the eye —
drawn upwards and then let go
to such utter treelessness
the next hard object's the moon
and if you miss that, nothing.
A Torque. An Eternity. True,
it's nothing to them. They can stand it.

At best, we might under-stand it.
But once, stopping alone
in a featureless town,
I looked up, in a cleft
where a few trees grew,
and had to look back down
to see if I'd anything left.











By permission of the author.