empathy of Trees, Malaga After Daniel Minter’s “empathy of Trees"

by Sonja Johanson

living so precariously, so easily
undermined by insistence

of water, geometry of swells,
frequencies which could lift

a saltbox as easily as a boat,
fog that would hide the banks

for days, still you loved that spare
island, the barnacled rocks were

as your heart, fish your children, dark-
skinned oaks your company. Why

should these have been taken from you?