April 1 Commute

Where the landscape meets the sky
and the hills meet the highway,
the trees stand in a row
crazing against the gray clouds.
In their naked April stance,
a dance that will be leafier in June
when they’ll lift their broad green fans
to shield, most discretely,
the fields which stand behind them.
In passing the blackness blurs
with twig-level crispness glimpsed.
Where those who laid this road said –
these trees can stay, those will go –
and cut down the many to leave the few,
those guard the path now taken
and mark the seasons as they come.