I still had two friends, but they were trees.
—Larry Levis
I went out into the woods today, and it made me
feel, you know, sort of religious.
—William Matthews
I'd like to have a eucalyptus,
a pale and slender one bouncing its loose thoughts
off the blue—
and maybe an avocado
with boughs like an anaconda,
and one expansive sycamore reaching out
for everything.
Yes, and a jacaranda,
its violet shade each June edging
the eternal past . . .
and a pomegranate,
I want a pomegranate with Spanish flame-
red blossoms dazzling as all get-out
in dim December.
While I'm at it,
I'll have an acacia, and a few Russian olives—
their aqua-marine leaves recalling, of course,
the implacable sea.
And a podocarpus,
those leaves Leonardo invented
to dovetail with the aureate cloud of light
backing up the renaissance.
And all this
in a little valley arrived at through mustard weed
and fennel, white and lavender blooms of wild radish
recalling the loosely affiliated clouds,
the preliminary stars . . . .
We stepped down
from that quantum shine
clueless as to how
our bodies might be simply pronouns,
how we stood for—
part and particle—those astral antecedents.
Right off, looking up,
comparing ourselves
to the lustrous night, we complained
of our unadorned
surroundings;
we would have towers,
would crawl back up the stellar imbrications
despite a prohibited tree
and all the knowledge
we would assume,
despite the gardens
of Nebuchadnezzar and Assurbanipal where
the dim substance of the soul was
elucidated
against the incomparable chastity
of the sky.
And though Socrates tells us that we can learn
nothing from trees—
only from the moral man—
what about steadfastness, fortitude, perseverance,
loyalty, tenacity, not to mention
modesty, grace,
their spiritual arms,
and a dozen other abstractions
for which men die miserably?
Still, we are not that bad off
if we can get out
one afternoon and find a faithful conifer
or two to praise,
or can let the lacy shag of a pimiento
sort out the sun,
or especially if we can recall
the arboretum of childhood
and keep the camphor trees,
the pittosporum hedge in perspective
against the vanishing point
on the air . . . .
But something was kept from us,
held over our heads, it seems, ever since—
incantations,
the chalk and diagrams of constellations
blowing by
until Latin phrases for all we were sure about
in the firmament
were inscribed in stone over
the cathedral doors and
set down darkly in orthodox
moveable type,
and the world divided, and so many
taking refuge for ages in the woods . . . .
Nevertheless, coming over the dark plateau,
there is our old town
spinning alone in light,
blister of a moon
against midnight, white static
of starlight across the desert, the salt coming
to the surface,
the ice caps evaporating,
and it's November
in Palm Springs, where I go walking in the morning
to uncloud my heart,
to keep its tumbling,
root-like
chemistry clear,
to see four wild parrots fly
from palm to palm
as I pass the convention center,
the steamy perfume of stalks and delphiniums
rising from the moist beds
and I am 7 or 8 again
wearing a red bow tie and stiff blue
business suit
for Easter,
the glory
of the manifest world
arranged in sunlight.
Above me, the mimosa and lemon boughs,
and no text beyond that—
I mean we're protected
from the vast void of space
by nothing more than air,
and when the night calms
down to darkness
we listen
for the planets whirling by
and it's only the trees
giving us back our breath . . . .
I take those wild parrots, brilliant and green
as Eden,
as a sign from God,
admittedly
a God largely uninterested, unsure perhaps
of what more
we could possibly want—
magnolia, banyan, yew?
Maybe an indifferent sign,
indecipherable,
inadvertent,
but there are at least these four green clues
to some happiness beneath the sky . . . .
If I can't have trees, then perhaps someday just
a few yards of dirt
some fennel bushes and nasturtiums—
that portion of childhood still volunteering from the roadside,
beckoning in the winds of traffic.
For the time being
I'll take these parrots appropriating
the tops of the royal palms
as if everything were still ours
equally before the sun.
Take what you can,
you know what God will do—
he will let the complaints rise
like a little smoke
dissolving against the dawn,
he will turn away,
thinking perhaps
of another universe.
The oceans will warm
and drive the sail fish north,
the last log
will be rolled out of the Amazon—
it will all go
to hell
in a corporate hand basket
as we're tipping the brim of our hat
over our eyes,
nodding-out on the bench
in the blue
absolution of shade,
beneath the last trees
of our forgiveness.