There is an understanding,
a smiling understanding,
between orchards and orchestras.
Jazz and Bach are fertilizers,
something extra. Trees are much older than music
and poetry, were gods for good reasons.
They have bodies and souls. Trees are choirs,
mezzo sopranos, coloraturas,
tenors and baritones, castrati.
I live with music and trees, orchards of music,
woodwinds and sextets. I sing
the “I don’t lie to myself” blues.
I learn from my suffering to understand
the suffering of others. I climb musical scales.
Trees have an embouchure. I’m a sapling.
Breath and wind blow through me.
This winter is a coda of falling leaves,
sequoias and magnolias Louis Armstrong
Coltrane willows, citrus, and evergreens.
I have a band of tree brothers and sisters,
we are not melancholy babies.
I age like a rock, not a rocking chair.
A rock does not wear spectacles,
have a heart with winter in it,
or use a walking stick. It is dangerous
for anyone to call me “young fellow.”