Pine Trees on the Escarpment South of Tobermory

here where the river froths icy over
bear bedrock even in summer’s cyclonic eye—

here I wonder what dreams the bent pines might have—

if they dream about equatorial winds and the burnt
coffee odours of strict summer days—
do they consider life between lukewarm waves
slipping down the zipper of another ruby sunset

or are their imaginations as frozen as a January morning
which groans and creaks like a factory manufacturing
precise stamped metal parts for refrigerators, trucks,
weather satellites and fine French guillotines

perhaps they listen for the distant drone of saws, the rattling
of chains; perhaps they wait patiently
for metamorphosis, for release into another purpose

perhaps they pray to the god of tables, dressers and studs;
perhaps they wait for their cryogenic moments as bookshelves,
wait to emerge again and again, as though considering themselves
in the mirror of what they are, they’ve fallen into endlessness,
these skeletons, these bones that ignore death