To Hans Christian Andersen's Little Fir Tree

(and to other trees the birds and I have known)

ittle tree / little silent Christmas tree / you are so little / you are more like a flower....
e.e. cummings

Vague dream-head lifted out of the ground, And thing next most diffuse to cloud,
Tree at My Window, Robert Frost


perhaps at times a coded music sobs
rustling the branches now invisible to the eye
and birds flock springlike as before

and dance and dance
perchlessly chirping
where you were. little tree,

who dreamed of the silver and golden
apples decking you out, of the children's
shouts: let festivities begin you trembled;

ropes of cranberries, too...

your rubied coronations through
you sighed and knew of a sudden,
it was not the wind.

beginning the game of let's pretend
entertaining the attic mice with your two stories,
little stories, overheard.

not knowing yet;
what happens now?

if I were a bird I would fly to your Forever
I would sing you visible again, my tree
with your cloud headed, wrong headed snowlike

longing for..who could name it?
now they've left no trace of you
beneath my tiny window looking out.

already beautiful you were.
under peerless starlight.

disconsolate little tree.
I loved you.

mary angela douglas 31 august 2015