By the parking lot of the strip mall
where I buy cat food, next to a very busy street,
these perky little green leaves alternated
between fluttering, trembling, and violent
shaking in what began as a gentle breeze
and then (using on the language
of the Beaufort Scale), became
a moderate breeze, and finally a fresh breeze,
and back again, shifting from 7 knots to 21
and in between, and then all over again.
I didn’t think all that then,
when I was meditating.
I was trying not to think at all.
When I thought, I was thinking of
the portfolios at home longing to be graded,
the groceries on the other side of the annoying detour
all longing to be mine, to come home with me,
where we all are now, the food, the work
still yet to be done, the image of that half-dead tree
in the wind still with me, resisting metaphor,
not really responsible for my wondering what killed half of it
and what the part that isn’t dead has to live for.
_____
marniere 