The scar-lips of the wounded wood
watch the sleek sweep of the road.
The exposed trees absorb the fumes
which seep into our smoky rooms.
Yet houses, rooms, these woods too, are,
no less than cigarette and car
creations of humanity.
From the astonishing age when we
(in Nature’s cyclic sleep long curled)
woke to ourselves and to the world
we have been forced to fight and fear
the natural world, that’s yet our dear
mother and love. This paradox
(a rift in the firm-seeming rocks)
rives all we’ve done and all we could
do, as the car-road rives the wood.