We need the ceremony of one another, meals served, more love, more handling of one another with love, less casting out of those who are not of our own household.
‘This turkey is either not cooked enough or it’s tough.’
A woman was fighting a tree. The tree had come to rage at the woman’s attack, breaking free from its earth it waddled at her with its great root feet. Goddamn these sentiencies, roared the tree with birds shrieking in its branches. Look out, you’ll fall on me, you bastard, screamed the woman as she hit at the tree. The tree whisked and whisked with its leafy branches. The woman kicked and bit screaming, kill me kill me or I’ll kill you!
Her husband seeing the commotion came running crying, what tree has lost patience? The ax the ax, damnfool, the ax, she screamed. Oh no, roared the tree dragging its long roots rhythmically limping like a sea lion towards her husband. But oughtn’t we to talk about this? cried her husband. But oughtn’t we to talk about this, mimicked his wife. But what is this all about? he cried. When you see me killing something you should reason that it will want to kill me back, she screamed.
But before her husband could decide what next action to perform the tree had killed both the wife and her husband.
The wind rests its cheek upon the ground and feels the cool damp And lifts its head with twigs and small dead blades of grass Pressed into it as you might at the beach rise up and brush away The sand. The day is cool and says, “I’m just staying overnight.” The world is filled with music, and in between the music, silence And varying the silence all sorts of sounds, natural and man made: There goes a plane, some cars, geese that honk and, not here, but Not so far away, a scream so rending that to hear it is to be
In Canada, on a dark afternoon, from a cabin beside Lake Purgatory I saw your two clenched fists in a tree— your most recent rage—until I came to my senses, and saw two small lighted glass lamps reflected through a window onto the maple leaves. Was it simply that I had stolen away in the wilderness to go fishing on your birthday,
When I see birches bend to left and right Across the lines of straighter darker trees, I like to think some boy’s been swinging them. But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay As ice-storms do. Often you must have seen them Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning After a rain. They click upon themselves As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
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