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Contrivance

National Arboretum

Consider these trees,

stationed on their slatted stands,

tended centuries

and trained to be small.

Root-pruned and limb-wired—such

techniques could enthrall

the quietest mind.

Appetite renders distant

the spruce one might find

clinging to a cliff

or maples burnished by wind,

positing as if

on each. As small as

they are, the feigned perspectives

offer up solace

(What could they be there?

What do we want them to be?

—Islands built on air!)

among their trunks, burled

and dwarfed and stripped of their bark,

in our full-scale world.