returning

You can live for years next door

to a big pine tree, honored to have

so venerable a neighbor, even

when it sheds needles all over your flowers

or wakes you, dropping big cones

onto your deck at still of night.

Only when, before dawn one year

at the vernal equinox, the wind

rises and rises, raising images

of cockleshell boats tossed among huge

advancing walls of waves,

do you become aware that always,

under respect, under your faith

in the pine tree’s beauty, there lies

the fear it will crash someday

down on your house, on you in your bed,

on the fragility of the safe

dailiness you have almost

grown used to.

~ Denise Levertov

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