As Maple Trunks Thaw

I was pushed out of my mother’s body
one April, cold and wet, in the fifth season
of the year. A measure of frost and mud.
It was past the last sap boil, more amber
than gold. I was a dial suspended in a
chunk of glass, like ice, my initials
carved into it. Today I click into a digital
video conference, faces populate,
time snags, and pixels sputter, so
someone looks like a Frances Bacon
portrait: enlarged head leaking over his
chest. We share 35% of our DNA with
daffodils. 98% with chimps. Our cars burn
dinosaur bones and the oxygen we breathe
is an excretion of ancient bacteria. Is it
any wonder we romanticize a row of tall
pines set against empty sky, the sunset:
a family, different sizes and shapes, calling
each other as a wind rumbles through
them. A song like a cello might make,
before it was crafted into an instrument.