Levinas asked if we have the right
To be the way I ask my sons
If they'd like to be trees

The way the word tree
Makes them a little animal
Dancing up and down
Like bears in movies

Bears I have to say
Pretend we are children

At a river one of them says
So we sip it pivot in the hallway
Call it a canoe

It is noon in the living room
We are rowing through a blue
That is a feeling mostly

The way drifting greenly
Under real trees
Is a feeling near holy


About this poem
"As a child, I played in the woods and pretended they were a city. Now, I sit in my hot apartment with my children and pretend we are in the woods. Meanwhile, the birch and maple trees I once played beneath are disappearing as the planet gets warmer. The more I thought about those vanishing trees the shorter this poem became."
-Idra Novey

About Idra Novey
Idra Novey is the author of "Exit, Civilian" (University of Georgia Press, 2012). She teaches at Princeton University and lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.

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(c) 2015 Idra Novey. Originally published by the Academy of American Poets, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate