If

What if all the trees were stone
and all stones
wood

would all the river bottoms
turn brown with aging bark
leaves clogging the paths to oceans

firs and redwood falling
cracking the ground
like columns from Rome
societies ending with merely the sound
of their own collapse

If everything fell the wrong way
backwards and into the sky
how would the clouds
hold their shape
would we know
how to patch the sky
would we know
where the moon belonged

If my skin turned inside out
and all my bones were
made of dry clay and dirt
would the earth finally
see each uprooted tree
and understand
how a forest dies









Connie Post is the Poet Laureate Emerita of Livermore, California. Her work has appeared in Calyx, Kalliope, Cold Mountain Review, Chiron Review, Crab Creek Review, Comstock Review, DMQ Review, Dogwood, Iodine Poetry Journal, Main Street Rag, Carquinez Poetry Review, Tipton Poetry Journal, RiverSedge, Up The Staircase, Wild Goose Poetry Review, and The Toronto Quarterly. She won the Cover Prize for the Spring 2009 issue of The Dirty Napkin and was the winner of the 2009 Caesura Poetry Awards from Poetry Center of San Jose. She currently hosts a popular reading series in the San Francisco Bay Area.
(Photo courtesy of Ronna Leon)