are probably the largest selves in the forest
but they are also the most obvious:
forthright, upright, they accord immediately
with the human vertical; as they grow
they wrinkle;
when cut, they bleed.
They could be frozen versions
of our ideal selves: grander,
slower, wiser.
Look at them gathered, their patient multitudes.
Beneath tinnitus, beneath breathing,
their song’s a dark web through the earth.
The highway whines; the trees dispel, gently as sunset.
You can walk among them, you can touch
or talk to them, they won’t run.
Some you can even climb, but others
will tremble with your weight—then,
as their limbs give way, the sound’s
of frozen muscle ripped apart.
Slowly they slip behind each other.
Slowly, the forest folds and unfolds.
Knowledge congealed again and
again into the singular.
Can you see their stripes? Gnarled ridges of space,
wound cables of time.
They yearn for the steps to Being.
Their greatest, collective achievement: the shape of gravity.
‘Commitment’ is meaningless: they might waver, but they’d sooner die than depart.
Reaching, shedding their becoming,
climbing the tower of Being.
Slowly, the forest expands into leaf-cumulus;
in its crannies and billows it creates universes.
Here are the trees, guardians of dimensions.
Through the crystal lattice of time, light cracks.