Jim Moore

 In defense of this planet, there was a pine tree I was able to stand next to after my mother's funeral. A pine tree bathed in sunlight. With the first light, pine trees come back. The clouds and the wind. I live near the place where ambulances leave for their emergencies. Sirens and sunrise. Streetlights and falling leaves. It's not rest I need, but a deeper way to be the pine tree as it lists southward. It's only death, the voice says. Nobody yet has failed to accomplish it. You'll do just fine. And for the record, there is a small grove of ragged pine trees grazing in the sunlight, right now. "Grazing" for they can be said to feed off the earth itself. Down the street someone brushes his hair, using a car window as a mirror: we do like the idea that we might fix ourselves. It is a fond and useless wish, falling needles, keeping us company on our slow ride down, we who are grazed upon by earth.