The Shedding Tree



At length I understand
What this vague tickling sensation is
This loosening and lifting
Like forgetful daydreams
Between one room and the next:
It’s one more leaf of me, drifting loose
Wending on a breeze of years
Slowly, inevitably, settling to earth.
What was it once?
What marks the feud of my denuding?
Perhaps it is a memory of France in summer
Or some simple skill – like sketching – that my body now finds strange
Or an extra surge of strength on winded climbs
Maybe a kettle full of turgid words, boiled completely dry
Or some delicate, fluttering, once-cherished yearning….?
Or wait…was it something else
Something more important
Woven deeper and more intimate…?
I don’t know.
I. Don’t. Know.
And in not knowing I lose more
Than all the precious selves I’ve stored
A barren ignorance crawls forth
Like Proustian sleep
While chilling winter
Storms my leafless limbs.
Such stillness
On this privileged ground
Gone cold beneath the heaping foliage of life
I am bereft and overwhelmed
In unkempt gloom
Gray gray gray!
And yet…and yet –
Defiant, my reach of bony branch
Jagged and accusatory
Against indifferent and implacable sky
…another vague, tickling sensation in reply.
Then, sensing what is leaving…has left
Burrowing through vague aromas of decay
I try to remember
Intricate, infinite, fiercely desperate
I try to remember
Those many paths that brought me here
I try to remember
And in my clambering effort
The leaves that grace my feet
Sweet and soft and bronzed by time
Reward me with a childhood game
Oh yes, frolicking amid the scent of fall
Oh yes…
That memory is wholly mine
Before I gift it to oblivion.
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