Tree

She wrote to me about the tree
In her own backyard, how someone
Felled it in the night.
In Brooklyn this was,

Where she lives in a building
I have never seen.
She used the word beneficent.
She applied it to the tree.

Outside my door a man appeared
Wearing the face of an owl.
I saw an owl once, on TV,
How it devoured a field mouse

And returned its remains
As a compacted ball to the earth.
“Are you my tree? Are you my mouse?”
The man said to me.

On the street was someone bound
To his newspaper, with no one
Offering to free him.

“There are too many things for one person
To handle,” said the clock on the corner.
“You are the prisoner of your own state of
mind,” a passerby replied.

On a bench in the park I sat and listened.
“You of the earth, let no one cut you down either,”
The rose bushes could be heard to whisper.
“Yes,” I said back. Just yes and yes and yes.

Download a pdf of all poems to date: Poems