wanted to make my poems from ordinary, spoken English, without excessively rhetorical devices, the kind of language spoken by my first heroes in America, my uncle Arthur and his buddies who would meet at his gas station regularly to shoot craps, drink Ballantine Ale, and recall their youthful adventures as merchant seamen, the 'real language of men,' as William Wordsworth called it. This would be a natural American-English language that an ordinary American in a heightened state of emotion might actually speak, a language heightened just enough to draw attention to itself but not so much that it would sound artificially 'poetic,' the kind of language a later hero of mine, Jack Kerouac, used."The TreesSitting here among my friendsthe trees, I feel theirquietude, the gratitudethey show by holding outtheir limbs, generouslyallowing the moss to growon them, and squirrels and birds tobuild nests in their crowns.They don't seem to mind mysitting here, maybe sensinghow much I value theircontemplative nature,their general satisfactionwith the way things are.Rooted to their one placein the woods, they don'tcrave something better,nor complain about the weather.They stand tall and straight,side by side acceptingwhatever comes.Joseph Somoza lives in Las Cruces, New Mexico, with his wife of fifty-plus years, the painter Jill Somoza.

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