Within
The moon hits the tree
in such a way
that it's easy to forget
the height;
the ultimate suspension:
eighty feet up
in a harmonic slumber
resting only
on the closest thing
I've found to God:
a single organism
on which two
(or maybe three
now?)
men can rest
and gaze upwards
at the shockingly
finite dance
of the leaves
and the stars--
all the while,
listening to the chorus
of the frogs, owls, coyotes
of the woods around

Without**
After spending a night
without the comforts
of modern man,
in a little green dot
on man's map,
boxed in on all sides,
I emerged
from the forest
to find a man
in a forklift
with a saw--
and at first it seemed
as if he might just
be trimming the branches
but then
the tree fell,
and like man
and his little green boxes,
product of a continually
diminishing temper,
a yard
(or perhaps
a map?)
was left barren