Certain Trees
Certain Trees
by Jim Davis
Pollen lingers in constricting fissures of
lung, uncoughable. We expect torrents
of challenge – we will be moved.
The wind moves everything
for a moment. One’s life is not
wasted when summer silence has been
dissected. You, certainly, we assume
are willing to host. Said the insects
tapping at the screen when I woke.
Treat us, will you leave
dishes and drinks on the patio?
Sounds of a silent forest – not the fruitful banks
of the Amazon: howling apes, native drums.
But the tall, proud American trees
like old Hickory, stoic Magnolia,
sway and waver not for being
but for wind. Plush creatures silently pawing
humble fruit. The forest barks with
lovemaking, until all life is dormant,
when the insects continue in the safety of suns
absence. They serenade Chestnut Oaks and Red Alder.
A wolf spider clenched in the corner, the slugs
floating in a tin of beer and honey and salt.
The butterfly and all that is said
about flapping wings with the power to alter
what will come. “We will treat ourselves,”
they croon. Daybreak embrace, she hums.
Rivulets of perspiration. Vascular limbs,
stretching toward something whose clutches they fail
to remember we are already within.
Jim Davis in a quiet sanguine way validates our language
and authenticates his own experience and that of ever moving
and loving nature in its own fixity of the creative process.