I don’t stand anymore. I can’t 
stand anymore. In the need of your company 
I don’t have, I don’t stand. I don’t  
stand a chance says the heart to the body. 
Stand what chance says the absent body 
in response. In response, I was a stand 
of trees whipped around by violent  
winds just before the coming storm.  
I don’t stand at all anymore says a felled 
tree once the fall has come and gone 
for all the trees. In this, need of forgetting 
everything seen since falling. Since before 
the fall the bird hasn’t been seen at all.  
All the night through, nights couldn’t talk. 
All the night through, a bulge of silence. 
We can’t talk no more now that there is no 
tree to run up. No brook down no door.  
No door. No way into the hours we held. 
No whippoorwill. No squirrel to run up. 
In my yard, the garden I’ve left to jungle. 
In my garden, nothing to say pigs about. 
No tree to gather beneath like red cedars 
you played with as a child, ripping bark 
off to pretend it was beef jerky gathered 
for the long haul. No long haul to stand. 
No long haul withstood, not for us two. 
To stand in need of your company is now 
to cry, to cry. And I can’t stand no more.