Sonnet #391

 What tools we have are shaped by human hands

And we measure whether tools are working by 

the eye — a master craftsman gazes on the bands

That demarcate all the edges and decides if or why

The measure works. How to measure birds as birds?

To track their songs and languages with their

Unbroken consciousness, their mastery of song

The way the trill warbles just so, and what shared

Memory is evoked among the trees who long

For each other underground, holding root to root

And shoving branch to branch, a way of seeing

Sky without a memory. Let us measure soot

Among the wildfires where the mothers weeping

For all their lost saplings reconsumed, remade, a seed

To build a tool that has no human hands, no human needs