Like Trees

Napowrimo Day Three. In bed at 11:30. Shit! No poem today!  Half hour later, this.

Like Trees

the water changes daily–

gray, green, blue, white,

black, glassy, ripples, rollers,

whitecaps, mountains. Fish

jump everywhere you look one day.

The next is blank, featureless ocean.

I remember walking a park on the hill

in Louisville after a tornado:  hardwoods

snapped like children’s toys, six-ton Pick Up

Stix, strewn on top of one another. Hours

before, we walked the trail for the hundredth,

two-hundredth time. After the storm, we got

lost in the jumble. the water is like that. easy
to lose yourself. never the same. never anchored.

Spring Willows

Here's day twelve's submission of NaPoWriMo (a poem a day for the month of April in honor of National Poetry Month).

photo from Long Island Daily Photo

Spring Willows


I don't have a photograph
of a willow.
Today as I drove by
two trees tentatively sending shoots
out spindly arms
 - can I call them arms?
they seem armlike to me -
they move in the wind like we wave
or better, dance - a smooth swaying
or a sashay, one almost thinks...

Anyway,
these two trees, relatives, I assume
only because they were near one another
like a brother and sister might choose
another question:
- is it odd to think of tree as siblings -
 part of a family?
Isn't that what a grove is?

But to the narrative
I am struggling with here,
these two trees seemed to wave
as I drove by, and they had a feel to them
that they wanted to be noticed.
Or maybe it was just me, wanting to see them,
and I thought,
I don't have a photograph
of a willow.

I'd sure like one.