When the world spins in chaos
I can sit on a garden bench I built
from two by fours and backed into a line
of overgrown azaleas by the grave
of a favorite cat, Piglet's bench,
and stare at the hard limbs of an oak,
rising implacable like the sun. And I'm without
problems significant under its centuries.
If I could talk to the tree it would listen,
like it listens to the red-bellied woodpecker's
call, to the wind rustling the long ovals
of its leaves. And if it spoke in its stillness?
the decibels stretched so far they're unheard --
I decide it does speak this way, speak
its message of morning calm while it listens
like I listen to the call of a red-bellied woodpecker,
to the wind rustling the long ovals
of its leaves.

© by Steven Croft.
Used with the author’s permission