The heartless, the myopic call us vampires,
parasites, though we are neither of these.
It is true we cannot feed ourselves, cannot
make our food from light alone, need the others.
Large stomata in our leaves, an anomaly, send
water into the air—an endless crying jag. Our
roots feed from the ground, absorb all the metals,
all the poisons. Yes we’ve been ridiculed, we’ve
been doubted and blamed. And if you spot us
shimmering incandescent in the canopy, you’ll
think us a trick of light, an impossibility. We
are rare, and docents hide us to keep us safe.
Unlike animals we cannot run. We are poets,
and we are sometimes loved to death.