Two Trees

The shuffling of feet, then,

was my own, and the leaps of water

in a day otherwise listing with rain.

Of the mirrors inside my home

I asked what is my worth.

Overloved, the panes of silver showed me

nothing but myself from various

angles, touching my cheek,

smiling and extinguished.

I cannot even mourn what seems to live there.

I know another grammar holds me

but not together, and I miss

looking for it, forget, even,

to look. A few carmine clouds

just within vision ... some women by the road

gathering trash. My life, imperceptible,

like bells of heat on skin early in the day,

or the smell of eucalyptus

I can’t place. I am always

unsure. Merely in attendance

on the good days. I press my ear

to the wooden door and hear

something flame in the white

filigreed leaves.

___

I felt far from anything that

mattered. The routine of a day loses

force—you work, clean up and eat,

plunging to sleep—what happened to those hours.

Those hours were yours and they still

pulse with heat and dream, like brown

butterflies lifting from dense twigs.

Some days I’m nothing more than hearsay,

a story read back to me that makes no sense.

In front of screens I feel my eyes turn

dusty, my grief diffuse. But sometimes

when I sense a slight shaking in the magnolia tree

I’m the girl staring at something on the lawn

her family cannot see, unfolding in layers of air

and water, close to everything

unspoken—a pause, a stare, a slow

movement of hand around a tool.

A voice taking time to say Good-bye or No more,

the sudden ease of speaking with a neighbor,

which was hard the day before. They spoke

easily with one another—their lives were words

that held in summer air, their thoughts leaden

and complex, their answers poor, their need

punishing, and huge, while the sidewalks themselves

were hot, the stone walls cool,

and just before dawn animals scavenged

for water in highway ditches, feeling their bones

flash inside their own fierce thirst.