A Poem
You are the family-planted oak by the two-doored garage
my progress-poisoned father broke an arm building
eighty years ago.
Our fields were snowed over then,
not the gutters of new houses
now homes.
You endure, wrapped every Christmas
in what will decompose on land
into what remains of stars, wished-upon compost
that generous developers covered
so that we could afford the taxes to stay and I
hold on.
My skin will fall like your leaves,
into soil for your seeds
just this year, perhaps, before my successful son,
whom I’ve suffered to love, sells especially this blood-spot
where you will decorate me for centuries alongside
your lover.
Home is where my son’s accidental-victim fell
with a playful push, from your branch —
hide and seek. He tried to tell me with words
I didn’t know, hoping for signs
of mental degeneration, to beautify
the horror.
What I’ve lived through, uni-demptive,
will give back, when I’m forgotten, climatically,
as if I were a once-in-a-lifetime season concluding.
Like you, I would have preferred, per year,
small bangs. To be even a haiku, just not
a universe.
Senescent legs never helicopter-twirled into hay with each loss of breath,
imparting, ensanguined.
Sundered hands never breeze-danced over streets with each friend-death,
inspiring, putrefaction.
Spheroid eyes never nestling-plunged into boundless air with tear-drips,
investing, moribund.
Under the tyranny of biology, dark matter, I think
how you will drink me up,
through roots, as I,
another annoyance who fought ending
in elderly hiding-care, remember
children.
In your heights, your lover was addicted to beauty, feeling safe,
as if you pressed blankets against my daughter’s limbs
and ran rough fingers over her eyes, innocently basting
a meal.
I like to think that your stick-stitched progenies, old as fate,
make you — present — adorned against a snow-filled
canvas, untouchable,
that I am turned into a scene by what’s behind me,
that I must only lift my arms and keep them
held.
.
.
.
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