Pining Away

People have been buzzing about trees
In conversation with other trees,
Eavesdropping on chemical chats

With elaborate prosthetic ears
And laboratory measurements.
We wonder what the trees think of that,

Among their talkative roots and twigs.
It takes a long time to be a tree.
Sit under a mature one some year

Then return half your lifetime later.
If it hasn’t been cut, burned, blown down,
Your tree will seem pretty much the same

While you have withered. Tree life goes on,
We suppose, filled with information
Relevant to living as a tree.

One stands by the side of a lost road,
Just growing, apparently. Watch it
And wonder how trees would sense wonder.