What Do the Trees Do?

After the picnic when we’ve gone home,
what do the trees do,
under the dark and the wind, 
and the cold stars,
with so long until morning,
and so many mornings?

They unfold their arms and fingers
atom by atom, stretch by stretch,
over long silent nights,
and pin themselves against a sky so dark
you could fall into it and change,

like falling into a well
deep with ancient tears,
and you drown and come back,
to flit between green velvet stems
all wrapped in loving ivy,
where haunted oak and walking willow,
feint blue light and a girlish spirit,
are all just one long thread
between then and now.