Tree

Tree

While I slept the tree striped to her every all
together leaf by leaf she let me know her

needle by needle.  Even in daylight wind a pock
of rain the coming of the snows she stayed straight
and up right into the sky naked and maybe aside from her flash

of fire and the ache of some days to lie beneath

her green to look up into her canopy (because

I’m not made to bear it all) I have to say I admire

her most this time of year when all her nudity lets

nothing on but honesty: the bump gnarl

ragged nipples the rough or silk of her bark

and the prominent scar her summer

mastectomy what’s left of a final sigh and shrug

and fall against the fence breaking it to

replacement.  She gave it in a labor I take

for granted I feel guilty for but can’t say why.

All day through to spring and all night her

aching isn’t she all that hair a woman, who,

seeing a storyteller at dinner breaks through

the mob to to wash his feet with all of it

pouring scandalously around his toes and ankles

and calves—and didn’t he in a moment

wont of humanity palm her scalp and right

down to the root boost her and cup her jaw

and send her throbbing out into all those

stars?  Once the clouds break away frayed

and manhandled by the contrailed wind they make

her stiff and rigid hair stand straight on

and anybody who looked her way as she left

weeping would have seen—would have seen—

but a mirror—but the coming and going of a cloudy

cloudless night—but a woman lying down

to sleep naked with all her perfumed hair spread

wide as branches fruitless now and bare

but for all that—oh but for all of that!