What Do Trees Think of When They're Trying Not to Think of Trees?

The desert in the forest is all blue sky and storm warnings this morning.
The leaves of the half-dead, drought-tolerant cottonwoods rattle
Like pebbles in a dry wash lifted by their own unforeseeable brightness.

Rumors from the neighboring planets, wanderers, conglomerate as dreams
Of life and water and weight in a place as cold, dry, and springily light
As the sounds of these coppery, clattering leaves under contrails

Of dry ice crystals. Well, isn't everything apparently solid dry,
And everything in motion wet? Ask the basalt stones that wept their way
Out of the liquid core and still, now, sit dully, duly waiting, under our roots.