Landscape Survey

And what about this boulder,

knocked off the moutaintop and

tumbled down a thousand years ago

to lodge against the streambank,

does it waste itself with worry

about how things are going

to turn out? Does the current

slicing around it stop itself mid-

stream because it can't get past

all it's left behind back at

the source or up in the clouds

where its waters first fell

to earth? And these trees,

would they double over and

clutch themselves or lash out

furiously if they were to discover

what the other trees really

thought of them? Would the wind

reascend into the sky forever,

like an in-drawn breath,

if it knew it was fated simply

to sweep the earth of windlessness,

to touch everything and keep

nothing and be beheld by no one?