I’ve been where she’s going
& she’s been where I’m going.
I raise my styrofoam cup to her
as we pass on the escalators.
She clutches the bottle-shaped bag
tighter to her breast.

We debate whether the lives of others
are ever fair game for art:
the moment, decisive or otherwise, when
the trap springs shut.
Perhaps we should be less like cameras,
more like leaves.

If I am the truffle, fruiting in secret,
these must be your roots with which
my hyphae are intertwined.
Who trammels whom? I think
I like this sugar spun from sunlight.
I will kill us some springtails,
harvest the fleas from the snow.

The sun moves out
from behind the house & dazzles me,
but its glare isn’t steady—it flickers
like a movie projector’s beam.
Small birds must be passing in front of it:
juncos, tree sparrows.
Refugees from the long boreal night.

*

See the photographic response by Rachel Rawlins: “Sparrows.”

I was dealt a singular hand, & learned
to do tricks with the light:
sun sugar, bittering
at an insect’s approach.
I donned a conjurer’s robe of air plants.
Below ground I have discovered
the prosthetic tooth of a glacier,
round & granitic, & I hold it
like hard candy in my mind,
that ultimate rope trick of rootlets
& mycorrhizal hyphae
that never quite touch.
__________

In response to the Read Write Poem prompt, “be a tree.” Other responses are here.