Imagined Woods

Looking through the sliding glass doors

I find myself 

across the street in a forest 

of old-growth oak and pine thick with green sleeves

surrounding apartment buildings,

having dodged bulldozers and aphids, 

as I have been spared, yet also mirrored

in sloughing eucalyptus bark 

and elbows of boughs bent 

toward a solar charge. I celebrate this lucky life 

with candles from the coral tree

and a canopy of tall fig trees swaying cheek to cheek 

while wondering how it is I have been granted

this Eden, this longevity of random turns. 

A controversy of crows is calling but not for me.