“Landscape Talk” by Thomas Zimmerman

You’d like to let the landscape talk, you’d like
to say there’s nothing left to say, but you’re
as bound as anyone who wants to leave
a record, pile of leaves or ash that screams,
“I am alive!” So, Miaskovsky’s on
the playlist: string quartets you haven’t heard
before, a burnished sadness, throbbing core.
Mammoth spruce outside your window’s half
in sunlight, half in shadow: molten gold
poured ceaselessly on military camouflage.
Your dad fought in Korea. After Vietnam,
he’d seen enough: retired. You couldn’t pass
the eye exam to get you to West Point.
Dad’s dead now. Blurred wind glinting in the oak.