MAN AND TREE

Having won through, you and I regard each other

Remembering in our bones the interminable snow and the

ache of an iron frost,

You with you buds like velvet, tasting the atmosphere

Which I too breathe, incredulous and lustful,

And I, desperate to halt a running moment,

Casting lariats of nothing at an arch and graceful fawn.

When your leaves are the size of a mouse's ears, they say,

The trout hunger for self-destruction.

Ah, time is the fawn that comes down to those waters.

They see her eyes as she drinks, and leap to her.

How silent she flits now below your branches,

Being already in tomorrow.

When your leaves grow to the size of a fox's ears