I Write A Statement Of Artistic Purpose For A Group Of Mysterious Financial Backers



If I made a movie about trees
about ten minutes into the movie
I’d show an oak tree landed on by crows

then later follow up on that theme
with a crow run over as the moon
gets caught in barbed wire, and so on.

Of course there would be the tree
that has monkeys in one branch
and my alpha family in the other.

And then a close up of an elm;
then a shot of a grandfather clock
abandoned under a weeping willow.

I would choose a tree at random
and make it famous in that way hoping
to gain the confidence of other trees.

To prepare for my film I would rise and fall
in my own death, and stand near parades with kids
gathered up into my torso, my leaves extending

everywhere but into the future
and the past, seducing sparrows
with the slowness of my didacticisms.

In late spring I would drop seed from my loins
and accept that, even though a place for many
arrivals and departures, I, myself have insomnia.

And, as much as possible, I would simply let
trees speak for other trees, as I know so little
of their contingencies, unable, even, to tell

which ones are boys and which are girls.



ahead to how it all started
*
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