Sally Zaino

I no longer know how to define consciousness or intelligence, but I do know that trees know things I can’t know. The jostling flowers in the meadow are communicating past me as I walk my dog. I peep through a window; the window is not me looking into an enclosed space, but rather, me looking out of my enclosed space into a world, a universe that is made of life, so much of which I don’t understand. I am losing the boundaries between myself and not-myself. That’s fine: it makes me write poems. Sometimes they are messages from myself to myself, telling me something I didn’t know I knew. But always they are because I want to share what I see through the window. I happen to particularly love the American Beech; seeing its tawny leaves brighten the woods in the winter makes me glad. I needed to share that love—and also the grief of thinking that there might come a day when they are no longer here. This is why I write, how I witness.