EDUCATION

To have lived long enough

and not too far from the dying

of a couple of ancient trees

the high leaf and flowering

above broken arms    to have known

one great tree full and sturdy

then in my own years

the arbitrary swords of sunscald

lightning    scar    scab    rot

in the woods behind our house

uprooted storm-thrown hemlock

(hurricane of ’thirty-eight) a humped

and heaving graveyard    do you see that

it’s good in one ordinary life

to have witnessed the hard labor

of a long death    the way one

high branch can still advance alone    pale green

and greener    into the sun’s

nutritious light