New Planet Landscape 39

Here, the trees grow sideways.
They extend rudely out from the rocks,
Driving vertical shafts of soil
Bare inches from the ground or
Stretched upwards a thousand yards.

To the birds
A limb is a limb, and the trunks
A select highway as solid
As the murmuring ground beneath.

As a system, it works: leaves
Still catch the wind, feathering
Oxygen through ordinary stoma, following
The inconsistency of light, eating
The small birds foolish enough
To stop and be still too long. Gravity
For this land is a suggestion, not
A law. But the law soon will be
Forestry.