Confession, at A Mass of Trees
On a bridge near home –
I’ve started to see how bodies twirl.
This chapped dancing. The trees here
bend hovering – green slices,
warming the sky. How little
I know of them. How little
I know – the stone parched,
crackled. Of the ant that crawls:
over finger webs – stained, crisscrossed:
these lines, wrinkles I never tend. As
avenues, boulevards. Traffic lines
illumined. A map,
darkened and flared. How jagged
this longing, dislocation; to consider
a home in these pines. To take
cragged slices. The moss here roots
prayer. Prayer,
for the water to run. Prayer
that it will not seep. Bridges
are entwined hands – a body,
I know, of water. An old man
there – holds the trees,
upwards, glancing.
He speaks in crackled tongues.
Wishing, to water. To a mother,
an unknown father. Praying for us.
