The Undeniable

I deny the music of the Elms, the Poplar’s
song of hope,
and beg for beauty in the pocked concrete,
the poured macadam. I strain for planks of dead
wood, mathematically arranged, built things.

A fender strikes a pole and leaves chrome
paint and a sustained reverb, a tone.
I smoke pulped wood and shards of fiberglass
and know it kills me, marginally, but can’t
deny the burning of leaves as retribution,
my own forest fire which ashes my body as well.

I stammer of myself, porch bound,
the last cigarette before bed forcing me out
into the night, its wandering skunks,
its Whitman and Thoreau at one with nature,
while I forget the names of trees,
and litter almost pathologically.

Yet I can’t repress the eddies and sandbars of childhood,
the play of sticks as swords,
the noise a blade of grass makes between thumb
and palm when blown on, or even the dunes that cry as they recede,
waving frantically their reedy hair, sandwiched
between progress and origins.