Old trees in the winter are like wizards
clean shaven or white beards hanging,
you can see the 60s and 70s in them,
not far off at all, right there even,
if you look closely. You could even see
other decades that you wish you lived in,
like the, 40s? I don’t know, I don’t look for
the 40s when I look, but
these trees are the ones, with that grainy gray
winter film on them: where the sticks come from
that crack under our feet when we walk together
through the woods towards the giant wind turbines
we’ve always wanted to stand at the base of,
just to see. Walking towards a brand new thing
like you and I, through the Scots pines, Silver maples,
Old things, trees
at home in yards: the ones creaky old rocking chairs
are made from, newly made even, I could make one
right now, lubed up and stained fresh,
but if I used that old thing out there, like a giant’s tibia
preserved from some other decade,
it would creak, crack, cold and crisp with gray
outside like this portion of the world’s schedule
the sun just couldn’t buy its way into:
“Sorry Mr. Sun, sir. The sky is booked. It’s not that
the rain will be using it, it’s just that you can’t.”
That kind of gray, more refreshing to wake up to
than orange juice, gray dancing in a line around
November through February and the trees—
branches dead enough to let me climb them
to their tip top, but snap anytime I try sitting
up there awhile and watch me fall, all the way
back onto the grass, back on the grass,
breathing in the smoke smell from a bon-fire
two houses down, burning old creaky things,
old creaky things burning.
Andy’s poetry and fiction have been published in Hard Freight, a Penn State literary journal, and two of my original plays were also there produced during my time there as a student.
