ED HACK

WHAT TREES DO

Clear sky. The breeze lifts up the tree’s green skirts
flirtatiously. So far as I can tell,
the tree does not object nor seem averse
to play Bo Peep, enjoys the breeze’s swell
between its branches and its trunk. The tree
does not reveal a thing, though one could cite
its en masse quivering, its banshee sprees
of craziness when storms exhaust their might
and shake it to its tangled roots that clutch
with knotted strength the buried dark of earth.
What does the tree exist to do but touch,
be touched, its life a constant state of birth
and growth and death and birth, alive with leaves
that love the winds that do just what they please.