Aerial in the Pines

Stephen Dunn

To cut off the top branches
  of the majestic pine
(once unthinkable for us)

was a bit of nature traded
  for clear reception,
for what was fundamental now.

The tree looked foolish, like someone
 well-dressed
with a bad haircut, but the television

had become what to do
 with difficult time,
important, an antidote to speaking

if need be, company when our nerves
 couldn't bear the silence
of a printed page. We watched sports,

the human spirit rising
 and falling
against excellence, against time-

one good clear transcendence
 worth one desecration
of a pine-though some nights

we needed what was mindless, too,
 those final chases
ten minutes before the hour

along winding ocean roads, what we expected
 when we expected it
(as if in a dream) coming true.