A Tree in the Palm of My Hand

“My imagination sentenced me to this journey.”

                                               ~Wislawa Szymborska

I trust the trees

with their diaries writ

in wood and their histories

ground to a pulp,

even dismemberment

can’t stop them

from sprouting

another stalk.

I too am

of two natures:

in one I’m

holding fast, while

in the other

I let go;

a perpendicular bridge

joining what’s above 

with what’s below.

With my  

rorschach of roots,

my feet dipped in snow

I reach toward the sky

  unsure if I'll reap what I sow.

Beneath a nightly moon,

I note the phases as if by rote,

with my heart like a knot

in a lover’s throat.

Green as the trees

but with memories

of meat and bone,

I walk upon the earth,

my anatomy my home.

Playing the long game

I choose to burrow low, then

a walking stick sprouts a flower 

to show I’m not too old to grow.

Above our interiority, 

a body intermingles,

each a careening marionette 

at the mercy of unseen fingers.

It’s true we all are being tugged

limb by flimsy limb, but

must we all go with the flow

at the hands of 

a fickle wind?

Having learned

to grip the sky

with the same tenacity

as stone,

I’m never more

myself than

by myself alone.

Consider the single pine

in a grove of eyeless birch,

 pining for its tribe

having been left 

out in the lurch.

Blushing in the sunlight

and blanching in a rain,

a foot soldier

knee-deep in longing

and stuck in a foreign terrain

with no way to march

and nowhere else to go, 

instead he'll honor

his fellow comrades by

not seeing them as foe.

Some worship green;

think of the book of Kells,

oh, to be at home as turtles

in their helmet-shaped shells.  

But now I say its my turn

to light myself from within

by rubbing palms together

to start a spark beneath the skin

to rekindle my own moon’s light

after gestating so long in the dark,

as if fire were a sign of spirit

and wood it’s means to spark.

2/28/22