SPEAKING TREE - JOY HARJO -

Some things on this Earth are unspeakable:

Genealogy of the broken—

A shy wind threading leaves after a massacre,

Or the smell of coffee and no one there –

Some humans say humans are not sentient beings,

But they do not understand poetry

Nor they can hear the singing of trees when they are fed by

wind or water music,

Or hear their cries of anguish when they are broken and bereft,

Now I am a woman longing to be a tree, planted in the moist, dark Earth

Between sunrise and sunset

I cannot walk through all realms

I carry a yearning I cannot bear along in the dark

What shall i do with all this hearthache?