Holiday 26

Arbor Day

I ask you to describe a tree,
and you say leaves, and limbs, and trunk--
and that's what I had blithely thunk
as fact. But biologically
a tree's a plant that's like a tree.
You're looking at me like I'm drunk.
Go search it up: the mighty hunk
of wood is (tautologically)

itself. The thing it was, just taller.
The falcon's nest, the groaning peach,
the myths they've asked us all to swallow,
our green lungs breathing each for each,
the blazes I was meant to follow
hang from the boughs of a figure of speech.