The Happiness of Trees
I slept that cool season on a screen porch by the bay
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' underbellies up to the sky
and makes the sap rise. I loved to wake
before myself, to silence and fog.
Sometimes I got up and walked out into the chilly grass
to disappear and sometimes I turned over as though
this happiness might last forever, and slept
just a while longer, until the first birds sang.
Floating Wolf
