You Will Not See Us Stopping Here

People are the woods today,
The new verticality
That itself began in trees

With heavy-bodied primates
Living in the oldest woods,
Where massive trunks packed in close,

Their branches spindly except
In the canopy, the crowns.
Some gained odd locomotions

To deal with that density
And paucity of forage—
They turned vertical themselves,

Tailless, shoulder-rotating
Creatures that hauled up and down
The great trunks to which they clung,

Crossing gingerly, upright,
Clutching branches with all paws,
To sidle between the trees.

People are their descendants,
Upright on your own trunks, now,
Abandoners and loggers,

Storytellers of forests
For which you still hold your weird,
Walking-tree affinities.

Woods are tatty, threadbare scraps
Of what they once were, but you,
You are lovely, dark and deep.