We have invested so much in objects
Available perceptible things and places
And categories and things
Readily or if necessary with augmentation of apparatus
Satellites and trees and capillaries and grommets
A train and a room and a car and a room and a room and a room
With our delightful little primate brains
Those thirsty fluxuous labyrinths
Involuted organs echoing the involutions of phenomena
When obviously verbs are more the thing
When objects exist and situations obtain
And events take place
They happen happen happen
And how far above do objects extend
That reach below to a congeries of other objects
Where does that tree begin and end
Root hairs and stomata
Whose name might be Sally
Who battens on decay
Friend of bacteria mold cockroach and beetle grub
Who competes for lifegiving light with the other trees
Straitened and driven and alive
Who strives like steeplejack ever upward
Who bends her bole inimical to darkness
Who dances in rain and opposes drought and pest
Who casts refreshing shade for denizens beneath
Salubrious cousin of the mood of shadow
Upon whose demise nourishes fungus to provide other nourishment
The waste of one the nutrient of another
Who tolerates the death of limb and branch
The loss of leaf that falls wavering to the ground
While continuing to flourish
And who unlike our primate cousins
Practices no sexual dimorphism
At least none dependent upon visual registry
And I should respect though I will never fully know
The experience of tree