Here in the garden
the trees do what trees do—
they do not grow beyond
their ability to support themselves.
In the top of this weeping birch,
the branches are leafless and dead.
They will never grow again,
nor will the tree replace them.
I think of all the ways we try
to heal ourselves, each other.
All the ways we go back to the pain
of the past as if it has some answers.
What if we could let them die, those thoughts,
those wounded ideas of how it should have been,
let them turn brittle and gray, and when
they have lost their weight, let them fall away.
I see how the breeze moves through the leaves
that remain, how green they are, how alive.