Treelike

a poem by Roger B Rueda

To know and not to act is not to know.
—Wang Shouren

A tree at a remote corner of the street
is idyllically ignorant
of every thing,
though it knows,
perhaps, like
us – thinking long
and hard,
speaking out, writing,
crying, smiling, just
like us, but
not you.
It seems your ears
have vanished into thin air,
to the woman
pulled from the car
and shouting
at the top of her voice
from the bottom
of the shrubbery
and struggling,
her future pulled off
like pages
having been torn
out of the book
as her knickers
fell to the grass
and as she soared away painlessly.