The negative ways we speak

to our dogs.

 Training ourselves to command.

Insistent control. Mastering something,

potentially everything.                                                                       

The coursing comes from a river

we doubt.

            Trees have time to organize.

They teach us the past, shelter our future.

Root.

Weather your storms.

Branch out.                             Stretch to feel blue sky. 

Let the scurriers clamber.

Quiet strength creaks in the forest.

There's no need to speak. You don't have to.

Just don't.

This is when wonder sings.

Human coders must be elevated things.                     Mastering us.

An amoral language commanding, so quietly.

Infrastructure knitting one finger to another.

Across ocean waves.                                       Flagging signals

while there's energy left.

                                                            Connecting tissue.

Maybe it's the silence lumbering towards us              making us nervous.

Something we can't control.                                      

Need to learn to command.

We're trying to hold hands,

but the wind

starts to blow.                          We scurry.

                                                                                    Look.

The immigrant memoirist I borrowed from the library. Her deadening job in New York City. A lap dog connected by algorithm of anger. Flickering civil hopes extinguished. Growing up without her parents. No forest.

                                Only angry voices on the phone.