Goldengrove Unleaving
Years and years I’ve come to you like this –
sliding in to touch base, dirt in my teeth.
Years and years I’ve leaned against you, breathing.
Green skin. Sap-stuck. Fissured as I am now.
You wore willow and I climbed up weeping.
You put on god tree when I needed gods.
Still, it’s strange to find you waiting
back here where we began. Years and years
round to the smell of root and dust and tannin –
as if this life I’ve made so much of
were nothing but a squirrel’s flimflam.
Once I fell through a vortex
of spinning aspen leaves. It’s taken me a lifetime
to know the place for home.