It can be difficult to get the news from trees.
Canny vegetable sphinxes,
they know so much more than they let on.
Like stones and secret agents,
you can break them with axes,
but they will never spill the beans.
In storms, trees chat up a storm.
It鈥檚 all a rustling gibberish meant to confuse you.
In the fall, their parti-coloured leaves are pages
in a book you鈥檒l flip through casually but will not read.
Hug their shag-barked trunks, they won鈥檛 hug back.
Trees don鈥檛 trust anyone with opposable thumbs.
But it is your feet that truly throw them for a loop.
Where do these drunken monkeys think they鈥檙e going?
they grumble through their leaves.
To put a tree at ease, therefore,
sit at its base like some kind of Buddha.
Just sit there until you sink
some roots of your own.
Bio:
Richard Schiffman is an environmental journalist and author of two biographies. In addition to Queen鈥檚 Quarterly, his poems have appeared in the New York Times, This American Life in Poetry, Verse Daily, and on the BBC. His latest poetry collection, What the Dust Doesn鈥檛 Know, was published by Salmon Poetry.