The Afterlife of Trees

From The Afterlife of Trees /Neither sheep nor cows crisscross our lives as much./Trees dangle apples and nuts for the hungry, throw/shade down for lovers, mark sites for the lost, /and first and last are/utterly themselves, /fuller and finer than any letter or number, /any 7 or T. Their fragmentary afterlife goes on/in a guitar's body and a hockey stick, in the beaked faces/up a totem pole and the stake through a vampire's heart, /in a fragrant cheese-board, a Welsh love-spoon, /a sweat-stained axe handle, a giant green dragonfly suspended from the ceiling with twine, /in the spellbinding shapechanging/behind a glass woodstove-door...