Prompt #3 - Intimacy and a Poem

For this blog, I found my intimacy with a bare tree near my house, my favorite tree, the one I asserted a single swing onto to feel more like a child again.  I used this tree as a representation of many trees.  I took this tree in my yard and visualized it in a desolate place, with no other surrounding trees, no grass, gray skies, and with this tree having still no leaves on it.  It is almost smoking, as if a wildfire barrelled through and took everything in its grip but this one tree, with its swing, silent and still.  I used this one visual idea, and a poem began unfolding (as I've been trying to get at least one poem out of my system for this class). 
I think the poem reflects an intimacy I pictured with this tree, and the precise nature I felt when writing this poem was that I sort of became the tree, thinking about its battles and tribulations.  I feel this relationship I built out of this poem presents a very different conversation from that of an animal or human, because trees are possibly one of the most helpless of all life forms: humans can talk or leave, animals can leave a place, but trees must stay put, they choose where they want to live, and if something in their environment goes awry, they must deal with it, grow with it, they cannot leave it.  While this immobility can cause them to live a very long time, it also has consequences: they cannot up and go, so they risk being destroyed.    
I completed this poem promptly, and other than getting stuck on a few words, I tightened it up.  My inspiration sort of came from just one of the readings, Land of Little Rain: desert which to most is wasteful land that cannot be utilized or civilized, but to anyone with ecological conscious, knows of its benefits and importance.  This can be compared to a tree, worthless in the eyes of some, valuable in eyes of others. 
Also inspirational was Miller's The Case Against Metaphor: An Apologia, which struck me because she was with a biologist, and she noticed things as a broad-picture sense, while her biologist friend noticed all of the intricacies in a given place.  Trees are seen as trees, forests, woodlands, very little times are they seen as singular, and their importance as a singular being, unless they are an old growth tree or a particular landmark, or both.
Here is the poem, elementary, yes, but I am not nearly where I need to be as a sophisticated poet, so I must start somewhere!

If Trees Could Talk

If trees could talk,
what would they say?
Would they talk to us,
humans?
So full of arrogance,
and yet empathy.
Would they want to be understood?
Or be left alone?

Each season the trees change:
From bare, to bud, to bloom, to bate,
without thought, only necessity.

If trees could talk,
Would we talk back?
Converse?
The language of trees
would have to be different
from our own.
For the trees learn not
from us how to discourse.
But from the soil in which they grow,
and the sky their branches touch.
From the wind that stirs their leaves,
and the animals who play within
their veins and vessels

They learn from the wise old owl,
and the cunning vulture.
The ornery squirrel,
and the careful mantis.
We learn from our skeptical parents,
and our greedy society.
From elusive strangers,
and our own selfish minds.

If trees could talk,
would we listen?

No, for we care only about ourselves.
We could never take the time to hear
the tales of the trees.
For we believe our tales
to be better, wiser, truer.
If trees could talk
we would hush them, bind them,
cut them down.

Therefore trees keep quiet.
and continue...
Bare, bud, bloom, bate
not out of thought,
but of necessity.

I know what you're thinking: what a depressing poem.  And perhaps if trees could talk, they would be lively in thanking us, however I find that hard to believe. And since it  is my poem and I can do with it what I want, I took my intimacy with my tree and made it depressing.  Like I said I was focusing on its problems.