How interested are trees

in matters of outrage and injustice?

Should trees be cancelled

for posting pheromones

to inform of danger, dispensing

sugar through roots to those

weakest amongst them

without signalling their virtue?

A boy on the beach losing his kite

in sprawling branches of a Ketapang

cries without acknowledging

its nodding, pagoda-shaped head—

how it might know and does not care

the kite will rattle in its skull forever.