Fall

We wake and walk to find an oak that fell with no
one there to hear. The old conundrum stands.

I press my ear toward ground to feel or not to feel
remainders of the sound it did or didn’t make.

My lover laughs. Without the noise, without the cavalcade
collapsing trunk and branches make, what’s left

for us is only aftermath. He knows how new a silent,
upturned tree must be for me. He knows that it depresses

me: I’ll never know the music that it might have made.
He reaches for my arm, limber, and pulls me to the soft

loam ground next to the twisted fallen tree. Alone,
the sound we make in tumbling down is small, but sure.