woodsong

[merelydanny]

Woodsong
(for Boswell)

What good could come to awkward us,
who never knew the names of trees,
to let love rise, a wilderness
of sick-sweet blooms and tangled leaves,
too green to miss the poisoned net
of veins that spread from tip to chute
or taste the bitter pit inside
the flesh that fills all friendly fruit?
We loved like fleeting seasons, fast
as light bruises in hoary dusk;
we yawned against the touch of time
and shed the days like swollen husks,
as sure as morning always more
would ripen in our hungry hearts.

I miss our limbs, their fingers forked
like branches from the body's bark.
The claims we made when intertwined
like nature's claims, both sure and mild
have bent two crossing trees to graft
then wither dumbly in the wild.