Gone Are the Trees with Their Doorways and Windows

You have to have been there; therefore words,
Whatever we conjure for you, aren’t
Episodic, merely semantic.

Where memory gets tricky is where
You really were, as one body, there
But have only vague words to say so,

Or where you possess an armory
Of words whose meanings you know to use
To describe somewhere you never were.

Where are you when you’re living with those?
In what sense are you even alive?
Semantics will build you episodes

You never experienced, but those
Themselves depend on densely condensed
Links to repetitive episodes.

Ponderosas tilt into the sun
And it is morning on the mesa again,
And you can see it, you can see it—

The barbs of light through needled branches,
Gold, sunlit wildflowers, shadowed grasses.
Smell the warm grass, the pine-scented air.

But you weren’t there, and we know you weren’t,
Since we were and didn’t see you there.
Still, what we are, we stole from the air.