'How to get the gulls to participate in the drowning'

[___peregrine]

This is admittedly indelicate. Is the heart
ever less cumbersome? Perhaps less splintered? My hands
smell of the pepper tree and I have shaken grass
from my hair for days. For days I have woken,
frightened, from dreams with the fear that what I hold secret
is not so much so, that I have been found out, that I
have been made a fool of.

This is not a love poem. I admit
the possibility, but that is the reason the birches
leave shadows on my walls and the sky
turns so abruptly from pink to blue when you are not here;
we are all hoping. This is the intent:

Admit the uncertainty as the tree admits the axe,
the instrument accepts the fingers, or the twisting
of the tuner's hands. Kindly allow the tuning, the tightening,
without complaint or fear of change. Cease resistance, instead
accept the elm's indifference, the sleeplessness; make my way
loyally to the night's wharves of grief.

Please admit: we all are born betrothed to loss, the body
tied and parceled out, the gaps between fingers promiscuous.
There is room in my heart for both the elm and the birches, for
both you and what you leave behind. I do not need
to know what comes before it does; the floor
your feet have touched, more elegant
even than the tree it once was.