Two Street Trees

To have lost the argument’s thread:

Events empty into their qualities,
just -nesses, residual in me, clot.

I walk under a late-blooming locust
into ambient grape soda—

a likeness such that the palate unacquainted
with artificial fruit

could not grasp the real tree’s bouquet.

It’s June. I’m in love with the reeking world.

Though I know that I am in it,
alone and with others,

I walk a thin space
cleared by doubt, counter doubt.

My questions baled,
my few important things

knock together at the bottom of a tote.

I walk into October

and wonder if by living
I have come to grasp negative dialectics

in a realm outside of thought.

One yellow branch cuts the green ginkgo,
of itself and not.