after Billy Collins

what if trees
decided to stop
growing?

expending so much effort
only to be made into
swedish furniture

they're sick of it!

what's more,
they'd shrink overnight
just to spite us -

the Amazon rainforest becomes
a soggy patch of shrubs,
ankle-heigh Californian redwoods

a squirrel wakes
up and figures he's
colossal

imagine his surprise
when he goes looking
for that grizzly

except the grizzly
is on the phone -

the secret nature
phone that comes
out of a stump
that lets
animals know
when an earthquake
is coming

- and he's talking
to some useless
elephant in an
indian call centre
about his
forest subscription
and yes
his cousin Smokey
has already tried
resetting

all the while,
the elephant is hating
her first day on the job
and her colleagues
are hating it even more
although they
haven't been
moving so often
these past few minutes