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.