The trees had taken their crowns away. The birds—those you would need two hands to hold, those you could capture between finger and thumb—had nowhere to rest, so I conveyed them into my house. In my house I had things made from trees: books, chairs, a carving of a wolf and a carving of a bear, although I put the wolf and bear away so the birds would not tremble. I had spoons made from trees. My table where I laid out the last fruit and seeds was a tree asleep. And the red birds nested in the sweaters and some of the large green birds flocked to the coolness of the refrigerator, and both the dull and the shining hummingbirds argued from the bookshelf. I gave all my hair to the nest-building birds. Every day we made pictures of trees in any way we could: newborn paper, glossy cleavings of soap, the frilled tops of root vegetables and even the keen pieces of a glass vase in the warbler’s wake. Bread in the shape of trees. And one day all the spoons and pages and wolves and even the table grew wings, and when I opened the shutters the earth turned over and over.
