during my darkest grief the forest
was like an open sea birch trees
the beacon I used to steady my position

my brain felt at home among
saplings that tangle seeking light
that part of the soul Aristotle thought

we held in common with plants

Animals are the core of what we are as creatures, sharing a biological world and inhabiting our inner lives, though most days they feel peripheral—an ankle embrace from a cat or the thrill of spotting a fox trotting across the urban campus in Denver.

The man gathers rope every summer
off the stone beaches of the North.
There is no sand in this place
where the Labrador Current runs
like an artery through the body of the Atlantic,
channeling particles that once were glacial ice
and now are molecules making
not one promise to anyone.

It's beautiful to think that trees have consciousness,
can feel their wood thicken, and, as the sun migrates
south, how the limbs redirect their reaching,
effortless and slow, their movement visible only in the form.

Rocks have the oldest knowledge on earth, rivers have
the oldest names and determine where the cities shall be built
and what shall be their shapes.

What it takes to dazzle us, masters of dazzle,
all of us here together at the top of the world,
is a night without neon or mercury lamps . . .