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I can feel the waiting of trees.
cold holding its blue breath. if it could end soon, winter. the knuckles of ice that bind it. everything that has been held back. please be ready to whisper something to me, Durga. place the weight of your leg over mine. I have been waiting so long. birds gather in the trees with their magnetic longing. time readies its small fast hand. now. teach me how not to wait. the long sleep awaits, sleep of nailed shut windows
silent sleep of the wordless cold. we have become so apart from the old suffering, the bundled unease, the daily staggering into the teeth of storms to find skinny food, the snow that drops quiet as a smothering owl upon our backs, so far from it that when spring buds, dearly as it does, we no longer reach up to touch its emerald face, we no longer stain our knees on the grass of kneeling. instead, we lug around our old crosses in a New England way whining about the rain and slush. that we are not dead never occurs to us and so maybe we are not but even so we are dying so slowly from something that no longer has a cure. and the snow fell. if I were about to die
I would call you first. the apple trees are bare, the last shriveled fruit devoured by deer. somewhere above the moon surely exists behind the sky. I know love exists the way I know the moon exists even without seeing it. likewise my blood, faith. I am fully within the house of me today and my heart is big. the trees are cottoned in snow, their winter attire. an icicle accuses the ground. I am thinking of you because of the tiny snowmen we made on your sister's porch. a long time ago but the snow that melts earth takes up and drinks. we are saturated with it. the memories, tree and fruit and bareness; one with everything I am, a sum, especially in winter. if you are of one heart but not many if all of your being here longs for the long walk to the river between the tall trees who hold the silence between their deep knees and the sky firmly in the air, if you could seed your body out like the grass and abandon as the fingers of the sun rotate you and in that rotation slow as an old dream you find yourself wondering truly is it is you who follow the light or the light that follows you? down by the river the questions are all like that, the same kind you might ask with the back of your head resting on someone's thighs. listen and tell the truth: how we complicate ourselves how we make more of all this than could ever fill the country of our small lives. |
Poetry LogPoems are posted here when I'm ready to share them. I often don't title my poems. The date you see above the poem may be the date it was posted here and not necessarily the date it was created. To see more, click on the Archives below. Archives
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Unless otherwise noted, all content ©Paul-William Gagnon, Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-NoDerivs license.
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