What the trees didn't tell us, we are

I pretended not to know what you meant

when you emailed me asking:

.

Was it a dream? You would wake up

tomorrow and I would be in your bed,

the warm presence of my body rooting

into the mattress, the steam of my breath

forking into green sparks. Presence.

I gave you what you wanted. Was I real?

.

I remember that email when I walk down

Madison towards Elliot Bay.

.

On the one-way street, empty branches

and towering buildings take me

step by step down the hill. From here

it seems the road ends under the water,

crystalline, just like it did last year.

Winter mornings.

.

A skyscraper is obscured by the arms

of a dead tree. Its reflection

.

shows in the glass of another building.

A skyscraper is only as tall as a city lets it.

I look through the branches and see

how blue the windows, straight at it.

The shadows of where leaves should be.

Even manmade things feel natural.

.

Nobody ever really wants nothing

from anyone else.

.

*The title of this poem is after a line from “Some Trees” by John Ashbery