These are amazing: each
Joining a neighbor, as though speech
Were a still performance.
Arranging by chance
To meet as far this morning
From the world as agreeing
With it, you and I
Are suddenly what the trees try
To tell us we are:
That their merely being there
Means something; that soon
We may touch, love, explain.
(excerpt)
From The Mooring of Starting Out: The First Five Books of Poetry
Ecco/HarperCollins
Copyright © 1956, 1985, 1997 by John Ashbery
Used with permission of Georges Borchardt, Inc., on behalf of the author