Have you no shame, tree, ripping your leaves off
like a green dress at a barbecue? You’re not
an April chicken anymore: tooth marks on your branches
where the woodchucks nibbled your skinny limbs.

I hear you at night, tree, drunkenly purring towards the sky,
wiggling your twigs at birds winging south for winter,
hey sailor, want to rest those weary feathers? In another life,
you’re a zillion toothpicks, a millennium of ax handles.

In another life, you’re an all-season diner for termites,
an umbrella’s wiry skeleton for teenagers in love.
But in this life, trunk splitting into dual leaders, feuding
torsos, you press against your bark dress, and the truth is,

I envy you: how you shrug off the wind’s gossip, broadcast
every grainy inch of your brittle, bodacious self.