Counting Trees

count all the trees —

the living, the manicured, the
frayed city trees, the countryside
trees, old growth and new,

all the petrified trees,

the fossil trees, the simply
dead and rotted trees, the 
lumber and firewood and 
kindling, bones of the lost
trees, all the oil pressed
from ancient trees;

count them, learn
their names — names of
their family, their individual names
so you can call them forth 
alive or dead; know them
by number and skin and 
leaf and root;

this is how any of it
is going to survive, 
the only way.  

we’ll have to 
do the same with rocks and
fish and birds and grasses and
all things — count them and
learn their names and 
call them up and let them
speak — and it will take a long time

so hurry: no time available
so less even than that to waste:

a tree, grown
from a hole in 
the sidewalk outside
your busted home.
start here,
this is one.  

start here.
what is its name?