For the Tree and the Deer
You are wanting to know
my name to validate my being
here—but what is
the genus name of furry green dendrites pooling
over swollen crust, to what family do I hail
a thank you note for its sun
sway, its secret sparrow
whose song I could not mimic in words?
Who has climbed your stacking shoulders,
erected their head in some terrifying not blue
sky, allowed your billow hollowing through
a body tender to its life-
long suckle from your basal ground—
if I should thrust my entirety upon you
only I will bend
with your bark’s pink abrasion
welting antlers along my cheek.
Some hits I came to feel, lucubrate,
came to open,
and crest, came solely
to sound in
a way that returns
me to myself
so it is
through
this fluted trunk where air pours
over heartwood, coats each pocket sunk
in splintered ring; here it is where
I discover dawn’s nocturne dew emerging
from a patch of rot
Oh massive tree—
sprawling nature across itself
my throat’s lingering pink
its paling hollow made neon as Moon
blooms through me, voice I came
racing, here, to hold
in my palm, to name:
set a place on the altar, know it
through its symbolic piece but every
time I enter the living
room kept curtained and dark, save
for a slice of daylight casting a strand
of white over the hearth
now blackened, deep, just then
I glean
a silhouette of antlers flowing upwards
as water frames nothing
sunned and drilled to wood
with a triangle of screws in between
it is
here emptied of chase, mounting
beyond the mantel its spirit
cast in curls of shadow only with a fire
in place, somehow unable to claim
its life with a name before I follow
that thread of sure light
I will admit I felt
some dim comfort pressed in
the carpet there, matted, my body
halved in lounging musk. I must admit the room
was warm, friendly, glazed, belly stuffed
and owned in the weight of itself
churning walls, stuck wanting
to feel the fleeing
face imagined under crescent
rack, gnarling in place but behind me
that elder ray of light lifts my gaze
towards each other kindred
and unnamed, invites me
out in
a way
I have known nothing
can claim
your spirit.