The huge red oak, long dead, by the creek
has been leaning against a smaller living tree
for years, moaning when the wind cajoles it
even slightly--like an owl in the night woods
heard at a distance, a sound we stand still for,
my wife and I, to feel our own breathing.
A few times I’ve tried to push it from the living tree’s
branches to fall, but it won’t budge. It’s been leaning
so long its bark’s worn away, smooth wood
gone black. It could kill with the weight of its falling,
and it will fall, of course, someday when no one’s
standing there to see it, though maybe we will hear it
as we putter in the garden. My wife said she wondered
what it felt like to be born, to move from that darkness
in a sudden burst of energy and breathing; she told me
she sometimes felt empty of herself, like a ghost.
We were sitting outside to watch the summer light
as it faded, listening to a barred owl moan
in the distance and waiting for something whose name
we didn’t know, something like an animal approaching
in a language we’d forgotten, and all we could do now
was open our arms, and wait for it to come.