The Happiness of Trees
I slept that summer on a screen porch in the woods
with the creatures and insects singing so loudly
my mind seemed to join them — out there without me —
to move around like a breeze from form to form
and then to return as a fox or a cicada,
some other night creature, to slip back inside me
humming whatever it had heard, patterns
I couldn't sing along with but felt inside
like the happiness of trees when a soft wind
turns their leaves' pale underbellies up to the sky
and makes the sap rise. I love to wake
before myself, to silence and fog.
Sometimes I got up and walked out into the chilly woods
and sometimes I turned over as though this happiness
might last forever, and slept just a while
longer, until the first birds sang.
—————————
MICHAEL HETTICH
The Frozen Harbor
Red Dragonfly Press, 2017
