Still Life with Invisible Canoe

Levinas asked if we have the right
To be        the way I ask my sons
If they’d like to be trees       

The way the word tree
Makes them a little animal
Dancing up and down
Like bears in movies
                 
Bears I have to say
Pretend we are children     

At a river one of them says
So we sip it    pivot in the hallway   
Call it a canoe

It is noon in the living room
We are rowing through a blue
That is a feeling mostly 

The way drifting greenly
Under real trees 
Is a feeling near holy

Copyright © 2015 by Idra Novey. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 26, 2015, by the Academy of American Poets.