Travelogue

A redtail sailed into the branches

near the top of the hundred-foot spruce across the street

just as outflow winds from an approaching thunderstorm began to rock the tree 

like John Muir’s Sierra Doug-fir

(he called it a spruce)

which he climbed in a wind storm and rode

like a carnival ride 

round and round, to and fro 

in “so noble an exhilaration of motion”

that it hit him:

“We all travel the milky way together, trees and men;

but it never occurred to me until this storm-day,

while swinging in the wind, that trees are travelers, in the ordinary sense.

They make many journeys, not extensive ones, it is true;

but our own little journeys, away and back again,

are only little more than tree-wavings – 

many of them not so much.”