Poem 395

Transpiration is a word half remembered from sixth form biology, describing the process of water being drawn up from a tree’s roots through its trunk and branches until released as vapour by its leaves … I was thinking about the way memory is embodied and runs through us in a not dissimilar fashion …

Transpiration Of Memory

I am not haunted by you

more than any visited tree
gutted by lightning
disgorging the walnut grain
and stain of memory
time curling into knots
like targets

remember the tree
we stopped by
its great rudder of fibrous root
all bony shriveled muscle
as if 
         dying
it had wrenched itself out
paddling in pain
the mushy ground

I am not haunted
so much as occupied
flinging a ring each year
on my expansion
                               
there in the pith
inside age
you trail a finger in the water
the ghost river that moves upward
through me
that I empty into the air