The Watching Tree
       

So, I went out into the blue
carrying my love-dream
in my bare hands like a bird, a bird
I'd found alone and had to raise,
and now it was time to find the tree
and we found it, me and the sweet bird,
we found the tree under the blue
as if the blue had dreamed the tree
to be on the hill, a watching tree,
to watch the other dream, and so
it saw me coming up the hill
with a clutch of feathers in my hands,
and the wind bent down a branch
and I set the bird in the crook, but the tree
shook itself and said, get up,
get up here, too, you carrier,
so I sat on the branch and boing! the branch
sprang up and the sweet bird chirped
twice and fluttered around me singing
and the other hills rose on and on,
and the river returned some blue to the blue
above, the bigger blue that had dreamed
the watching tree on the hill, so I said,
excuse me, Tree, is this still my dream?
and the tree swayed and said, Honey,
Honey, Honey, there's only one.

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Copyright © 2017 Maurice Manning All rights reserved
from One Man's Dark
Copper Canyon Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission