Poem 308

The difficulties of sharing a rich internal life … this is a lot of the reason I started this poetry project – before I dived deep into the boxes if you had shown me this poem I would have admired it but sworn blind I didn’t write it … it’s a peculiar delight to discover that actually I did, that it’s my distant self-as-poet who’s giving me this present pleasure as reader … because this is really good and lovely I think …

( amongst many fine things, I particularly love alveolus, the ants carrying eggs (seen by me as a child), telling a tree and giving birds, image of the tree turning on a hill, going wide to see our galaxy as also a tree, half-rhyme of pylon/mountain, and the way the last lines bring it all home … )

I Could

I could tell you a tree
anchored in all weathers
breathing air like a lung
each green alveolus turning like a satellite
after the sun
I could tell you the planets of this tree
the moon of this tree
and its fluttering alphabet
the notes of its scale
and the pitch of its fine-brained music
underground
show you a map of root rivers and tributaries
the uncharted twinings of ants
wax-white eggs raised above their heads
give birds into the tree
like the return of an expected heartbeat
set the whole thing turning on a hill
about a yellow star
caught high in the branches of a young crush
of stars
I could tell you a tree or a pylon
a wisp of smoke or a mountain
the sound of water or the blue shock
of your eyes

but your eyes
make me lose myself
make me shy