The gentleman driving my taxi clarified
that it is the trees who bring the rain,
and my feet fell through the floor,
tumbling onto pavement, sandals scuffing
the roadway. To imagine, I assumed otherwise:
that rain brings the trees, that these gargantuan vegetables
depend on what falls from clouds, rather than the clouds’
very existence being because of combined branches
and leaves, trunks and roots that extend beneath grasses
and net underneath the asphalt we drive on, invisible
but working, pulling together water particles, forming
entire systems and maintaining a standard rotation
like the planets I studied in grade school.
//
He continued with the conversation,
but I became a stuck-foot breathing machine,
pedaling past the hillsides as he turned the steering wheel.
He turned the steering wheel and the trees—palm, mango—
became Denalis, Jabal al-Akhdars, capable of altering the atmosphere
and thus the direction of our future conditionals.
There was no breeze to jostle the car, but tree fronds
were a shimmering. Each shade of green corresponding
to the number of relationships I had misidentified,
that I had eyed in opposite and convinced myself certain.
//
Yes, trees bring the rain. He ignored me in the rear-view,
tapping his fingers on the metal door, his arm stretched
out the rolled-down window. The road we traveled
left the fields and aimed for elevation. We climbed
like slow-growing vines, and I could no more define
the dizzying force that holds us earthbound.
//
A generation of trees filled my lungs wet.
This is to say, what I once believed
unlikely is probably true.
