CHRISTOPHER BUCKLEY

SPRING/SUMMER 2021 ISSUE #02 POET

Christopher Buckley‘s recent books of poetry are CHAOS THEORY, Plume Editions; AGNOSTIC, Lynx House Press, and The Pre-Eternity of the World, Stephen F. Austin State University Press 2021. He has recently edited: The Long Embrace: Contemporary Poets on the Long Poems of Philip Levine, Lynx House Press, 2020; and NAMING THE LOST: THE FRESNO POETS—Interviews & Essays, Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2021. 

A PHILOSOPHY OF TREES

The trees read my thoughts as scrupulously

as the sky—dry wind 

in the olive grove, fires in the scrub oak, 

a chorus of flames, and ash floating out 

to sea and back again . . . 

like guilt, like pride . . . God, Fate, parallel universes—

some thoughts with which to face the forest of stars. . . . 

Thin clouds cast shadows 

over the geraniums and the lawn—the soul 

that was disguised among the sea-grey acacias 

of childhood shining 

like spindrift off the rocks. . . .  The sea still tugging

at my shirtsleeves as I stand here bending a bit

with the cypress lined

along the cliff, like flowers toward the light . . . 

no conclusions anchored beyond that.  Yet I’m not 

done worrying about 

our molecules ending in the cold conundrum of space, 

all our theories having walked off without their shoes 

into the night.  The clouds 

of the 20th century are gone—so much for our 

inheritance, and our hope . . . but where else might 

the infinite reflect such 

loneliness as ours? Like us, the trees have little 

but themselves.  Sunlight across the surface of the sea—

so it is with desire, despite 

whatever it is singing above us in the leaves.