I look around and realize
I do not even know the trees
That stand beside me every day,
That shade my walk, and point the way
Towards the changing skies —
I do not know the trees.
And yet I speak with confidence:
I seem assured and quite at ease,
Untying other people’s knots,
And feeling like I know their thoughts
Without much diffidence —
So cool and at my ease.
But now, beside this mossy tree
Whose species is unknown to me,
I think of all that I hear said
I miss, because, inside my head
I’m writing out what I’ll say next
To entertain the crowd —
And how embarrassed I would be
If people heard the thoughts in me
That don’t get said out loud.
I do not know or understand
Why confidence, that playful tease,
Insists on bursting out, when I
Have really got no alibi:
It isn’t staged, or planned —
That real but fun
Disease
