Who Wants to Know?

The pines that shade the park road
From the sun and from the moon,
From the heat but not from snow,

What could they know? We see too
Much of us in them, too much
Of them in us. We ask them

To be good, to be dark shades,
To scare us, to hide wood gods
And sprites of ours in their bark.

They want, in some way—that much
Seems sure. But what else are their lives
That we use like stone, soil, gold, oil?

We’ve learned what they breathe and how,
The deals they make with the ground,
Some sighed scents they send as cries,

But we don’t know how it is
To be in the way they are,
Long as we’ve kept them in mind.