another AUTORRETRATO

ENIGMA

So I tried to explain the enigma,
which I knew was a futile effort
mainly because I don’t understand
myself, well him either, but you know
what I mean at least about myself,
but there is the matter of the trees
which I keep going back to see,
one in particular in my backyard
which peels right out in plain sight
of everything and everybody, birds
especially, birds and butterflies,
which if you're going to take it off,
take it all off in front of an audience,
why not them, my impulse was to
question them, the pronoun, not
the actual butterflies and birds, but
that’s what old English teachers do
when the antecedent is hidden way
back there somewhere in a sentence
that goes on and on and on and...
you get the idea.