THERE ARE ALWAYS TREES

When November takes down our tender stemmed flowers

It at first can feel barren but

I’m not the only thing left standing still

There are always trees.

I walk out of the rain quiet deer woods

Deerless

But I am there

To see the last light burning

Behind the pines.

A fawn ran out of the staghorn stand

And stood

Like a deer in headlights

Before he headed for the hemlock hills.

We got a truckload of oak and maple leaves to mulch our elders and shelter our soil.

Sal and I spin through them, chatting.

A friend sends me a meme of me - Tree hugging on a Friday night.

Another friend sends a reminder

“You will experience them perhaps as corporeal beings, but more often, we perceive them as shades, variations in light, swift movements, and unexplained sounds.” and I remember.

I follow a buck through evergreen woods. If it weren’t for where his antlers rub the trunks of balsams clean, he’d be a ghost to me.

A friend takes a buck in the morning and tells me

“He had a full belly of acorns and was in the thick pines with looker of a doe. Next thing he knew, he was dead. Not a terrible way to go, I think.”

Let me live

Let me die

In the company of trees.