I imagine you, your voice stopped
by the speed with which the lives around you crumble.
I imagine you wanting, trying to write,
not about the blood stains at your door,
not about the fragments of your family
huddled in basements, nor about the hate
rising in pandemic streams
but about the tree hidden in some
obscure alley, the last tree,
and not about the fact that it’s the last tree
but about buds that have opened into leaves,
about new leaves
with bits of light and wind in them.