I caught them. I know evidence
when I see it. Plainly, a party
happened here. It looks like a pub
at the morning edge of a night
of fine carousing. Some hangers-on
are still reeling and some just drifting
toward the day’s first light. The rabble-
rousers have gone, leaving pine cones
everywhere, chewed right to their cores.
What a mess! And look at that heap
of cone scales! Never in all my years
have I seen a pile that high! But then
neither have I ever seen a drunken pine.
Right here, in the place I always called
the nursery. Looks like the babes
are growing up.