Aerial in the Pines

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.