Antivenin No. 3

She is not the first to say: tunnel
of trees, place without sun
or with little, where trees meet gravity
with something akin to surrender.
Call it bowing though you know
it’s not. Call it commonplace as
soil once was and is no longer.
Call it commonplace as heedlessness.
Don’t bring up sex, religion, politics,
nor weather either anymore. That’s just
the way it goes. Imagine that, she
used to say, her hair a perfectly
flattering cut and color, and why
not? It saved her from criticism
in her own home. Women do
what we must to deflect his gaze,
to be free to cast our own
upon snow or not-snow, soil or
not-soil. Compost I write and think
compose. Compose I write and think
compute, measure all the microbes left
at the base of this tree where snow
piles up then melts, piles up then
melts, all winter long: muddy days
and icy nights and rarely the
clean bright purchase of fresh snow.
Birds still sing. They sing out of sight,
but they still sing: dozens
congregate in one bare tree.
I count six species before they begin
to notice me and hide—not fly,
hide, for old maple is a host of
baffles and human is grounded,
bowing down you might say.