Trees are not poems

And are not designed

To be the deaths

We so long for them to be.

Trees get struck down

By the sky

Get split up by the sky,

Struggle in its chest

And grimace

With its deeper inhalations.

A tree is a mangled,

Pock-marked truth

That managed its way

With genetics and luck

To be the flat frame

That you don’t understand.

Spend a minute, an hour

A sunset

In its sturdy arms.

Then speak to me of

The poetic earth

That draws upon the sky.