Somewhere in the national forest,
there is a coffin tree for each of us,
chosen at birth, containing us
completely, even in its youngest seedling.
If we keep no one left to love, to love us,
to cut it down, to afford it
carved to order, we will wander,
the flower bridge, the light-rail route,
the geopark lot, unclean ghosts
the clouded blue of our deepening cataracts.
What’s left of us, children moved to city,
smudged air of our once bodies, is holding,
exhausted, the village brinkline of trees
from the road, disappearing as the mist
that beads us shape burns off at dawn.
There is a difference between fire shaped
like a horse and a horse made of fire.
(2010)
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