 Thank you everyone. I say I'm very honored to be here among all these incredibly talented poets. It's a big honor. So my poem is called The Truth in Trees, The Truth of Trees. We will sort this wash into shades of many colors, put the blues with the yellows and hope of making green in a time and a place where green is growing scarce. We read the story in the paper and it wasn't good. How the truth is spelled right out there in the width of a tree's rings. How paleoclimatologists have read the rings and say this year's snowpack is the lowest in 500 years. To the north, south, and east, 3,000-year-old giant sequoias wait to be felled by drought and wildfires. It's hard to swallow, much less breathe. If we want a different story, we need to close our ears, eyes, noses, and throats. We will fold the sense of trunks and leaves and branches into a tender memory and sew it into the hem of our shrouds before we sail away. Down along the waterfront, a cormorant perched on the rail of a dilapidated dock spreads its wings and dives into the bay without a ripple. We take the steep cement steps down to the Sunday Farmers Market and fill our recycled bags with winter greens, fingerling potatoes, and pink lady apples. We take them home to rinse before we cook and eat them. One apple has a soft brown bruise, the other a small wormhole. Should we start with those two? Thank you.