Where It’s Likely To Go Better

When I see the moss blown to left and right
from where it hangs on branches of old trees,
I like to think it's been growing there forever.
But forever doesn't apply to moss, any more
than it does to trees, whose counted rings
are a measure of their mortality and not of
deathlessness.

The moss grows, and is pulled down by boys
who jump and grab hold, thinking they are
Tarzan, lords of the jungle trying mostly
to impress young Jane who might be looking
from between the blinds of the windows next door.
Or it is weighed down by rain, taken by birds
and squirrels to form the softer parts of nests,
or falls of its own accord, only to be trampled
underfoot or to wrap itself around the blade
of the lawn mower in the unlikely event
that I should ever cut the lawn.

But I was going to say when truth broke in
with guilt for unfinished household chores and the imaginings
of boys who long to be the savage heroes of unseen maidens,
I was going to say I should prefer to think
it's been growing there forever, blown
swinging this way and that, a pendulum of sorts,
descending from the heights of some old oak,
free on this its earthly end but rooted firmly
in the branches of some tree that reaches
its old arms heavenward.