We turned into trees so slowly
Our arms stiff, our feet bound
In this cold chosen earth

The narrative is reality for us
Now the wind moves branches
Same motion, the same arc described

What was a good age for Silver Maple
Forty years ago the root ball pushed and
Grasped at whatever was blindly presented

Interlaced in a drab field of brown weeds
And a perimeter of superfluous barbed wire
We are not moving, not going anywhere

We eventually stopped seeing a direction
Possibilities were frozen in brittle ice
And now the story is of quiet resentment

I could be alone and equally as wooden
If the other tree had not entwined me
But perhaps as a great blizzard of whirling seed.