A patch of blue amid the boughs
Of the great white oak double-boled
One stem greater than the other
And the roots they say extend just as far
As the limbs now so lush with foliage
That the sky arrives only in glimpses
And sometimes the ground becomes so sodden
That a tree topples in the gust
And the web of roots rises sadly exposed
And yet you can see the many places
Where the strands have broken
The smaller branchings perhaps still active
Collecting nutrients dissolved in water

And we have established those processes
By measurement and inference
And yet we imagine their participants
The dipole of water
The radical of phosphate or nitrate
And a genetic analysis might reveal
The separate identities of those twin trunks
But why speak of separation
For the infinite communication underground
Or for that matter in the canopy of leaves

Must I always make disclaimer
About the meaning of we
Humans a species like any other
And like every species unique
Who justly esteem our neurological prowess
But the botanists tell us how oaks reveal
In their merry promiscuity
Ambiguating the white say and the red
To say nothing of their root hairs and stomata
The clumsiness of our taxonomies
Of our distinctions even unto the living and the dead
Those things that live
And those descended to dreadful death

And hence we know the significance of shit
Or something of that significance
Proximate source of those very nutrients
Through the ministry of molds and bacteria
The mechanical industry of boring invertebrates
That return the tree to the soil
And deliver the fruit of the soil to the tree
And hence we should esteem
Those things to which we are most averse

As the child chants long pent
In school room living room or bedroom
That the rain should go away
Making the obligatory disclaimer
That it should return
In some suppositious future
So we imagine
So we delight to imagine
The magical efficacy of words and songs

And we mythologize our aversions and delights
When the scarab raises the unconquered sun
Or when Mad Dog Tannen
Gets a mouthful of road apples
Fit punishment we delight to suppose
For his cruelty a fall of man
Fruit of the tree of knowledge
Whence the sweat of our brows

And as for the pains of childbirth
They derive at least in part
From those big heads with that impressive neurology
So maybe hominids with their big heads have it worse
Than horses or other matronly mammals
For after our labor the real labor starts
For we are not as foals who stand within minutes
More like grubs
Who must creep and crawl and swink and strive

And thus do we impose upon the child
The burdens of orthodoxy
How the rain must fall to engender the flower
How we must flush away the fruit of our bowels
And with every step the child esteems its knowing
And asks for more and why
And where does the poopoo go
And we delight to explain
That the water carries it to a place
Where bacteria perform their silent ministry
That the water cleansed might return to its source

But we conceal for a time the further fact
That our brilliant technology
Exploiting creatures great and small
Leaves behind a sludge
That we don’t know what to do with
And for the moment we must accept
Those things to which we are most averse
And take delight in a patch of blue
While the clouds gather
Threatening they say
Another interval of rain