Second Growth

A pair of beech trees branches stretching wide
rises from the chassis of a truck lying
to one side of an abandoned logging trail—

in the tarn’s stagnant warmth a single cell
performs the calculations to transform
pond to marsh to wood to field to pond—

and you, like this adolescent wood,
so easily borne through, only a portion
understood—for the thrips, the frost, the blade

you will or won’t withstand there is the soothing
indifference of the treetops swaying above us,
untouched by even the most destructive of our plans.