What could I possibly know of their manifold ways, the trees?—
how at last light of day each thrush and wren quietly rush
to a shaky branch, but of a sturdier limb, every knot and knee
close-in to the trunk, issues a solemn creak, as if an ancient heart, flush

from its own beating, tucked in the in-most ring, moves toward
every breathing thing and offers, gratis, just enough abode. 
This is as it ought to be. How guileless we’re lured,
no matter when— to the place we belong. It might’ve rained, snowed,

the ice made this world wobble, as if every branch,
weighed down in its place, sometimes home to a bevy 
of starlings, whose current calm belies their well-known need to stanch
the silence, itself—by their mere presence—made more dark and heavy. 

Later the wind might up, and all will fly, as if fanned
toward waiting day. Despite our woes, like the trees, we stand.

The ridges and whorls don’t mark you 
any more than those wax lips you’ve bitten 
off your face, and those googly eyes, blurred 
by tears and hard wear, you’ve finally plucked 
and sent rolling like marbles out from where 
they stubbornly refuse to reside, peaceful and wan. 
Tell you what, when that improbable edge
scores the meat of your thumb, take time 
to watch yourself come a little undone, 
feel the sting build to a throb and a thrum:
Don’t reel in that hand when it goes astray—
up the wrong thigh, or through the wrong book,
or fluttering when it might have been manly and firm. 
Here was no homeland, no place worthy of hope or return.