trees sing

By David McLean

trees sing still their rancorous council
under an absent heaven, trailing gone gods
behind them like kittens carrying tails on asses
and also my burden on their fragile shoulders
to be a solitude and a wholeness.

they stand erect like sentinels under suns
full of death and the dead. they are present
through all their timeless panic torture
as knives in the hands of small children
who just ran with unintentional scissors

once, and now carry accidents inside heads
bowed to the burden of white light, and later
to gray nighttime. i have kittens instead
to carry these burdens such as the sullen
solemnity of never suffering. their mission

is to clutch at straws and miss them
because they are little. this missive
is written to nothing and meant for them,
for kittens and all the trees who plan to leave
me to dream, it is for everything that runs

with scissors and is still technically living,
for all the already dead children