THREE POEMS
The Lonely Humans
A type of hickory, it grows by water.So are we fools to drive to the riverthe day after our most savage stormshave finally stopped to seea tree we’ve never seen before?To hike in cold mud through a leafless forest,to behold clearings now clutteredby whatever fell last night—mostly oaks,no hickory—to attend the mad performanceof a newly roaring current.I do not want to call it singing,the wounded poet’s head howlingdownriver. Remember we scornedhis broken heart, broken rashlyby himself, some say, for wanting lovetoo soon. You say I am unfair, that too muchrain is what makes the river rush (): we hear itas mythology. We hear it outsideourselves, a surfeitwind against winter trees, branch-tapsI mistake for premonitions. Of what? That the treeis here, ready to spring to life again. I amunfair. I want to love honestly; I want lovehonest. Every tree is the wrong tree.This is the direction we get lost in.Beech, sweetgum, more oak. But shewas impatient too, you say, it is possibleshe willed him to look back. We do not love aloneis what I think you mean. When I walk behind you,the back of your head is golden, ungovernablelight I cannot look away from. Is it lovethat to follow you I find myself choosingan unexpected path; should we find the tree,will it be I who led us there or you? Long goneare the leaves alternate, compounded, eachan arrow, the thrust of a green thought;along the forest floor centuries crack and turnto dust. We have children, grudges,a Dionysian mortgage, habitsmostly bad, and yet every DecemberI imagine spring, our time pastand to come, how when you follow meI track the blazes to reach the river, and oftenI have to stop myself from looking back.To stay together, look away, some god said.Here in these trees, our voices have nofaces, we’ve walked like this for an eternity.
