Hi there.
It’s good to be back posting. I’ve been away from the blog for a couple weeks while navigating some major life changes; namely unpacking from a move and preparing for my first child. Some balls need to get dropped amidst so much to juggle, and unfortunately this was one of them.
The poetry has continued to flow, however, if only to help me stay afloat from the big emotions that come up amidst pivotal times like these. So now that I’ve returned (cue: triumphant score), I’m sharing one of my freshest poems, which finds me trying to explain and contend with the changes in my life’s direction and romantic relationships that I’m still trying to wrap my head around, the best way I know how — through art and metaphor.
Enjoy.
There are branches in my brain falling into decay. If I tried to climb them now they just might break. When we were together I grew and pruned them just to go out on a limb and forecast a dawn on the horizon, when we might have kids. Who else but I -- the walking talking question of why, crumbling spinal bridge between Earth & sky, unresolvable harbinger of tension between free will & fate -- massacred this tree at its roots, who harbored so much life between cracks in its bark, where woodpeckers peered through memories measured by years in its rings? And even as it, as we, were falling, like a playful baby Appleseed I planted another, premature answer to my prayers. She who, like me, came before the was called, a bit too eager. So sometimes when I look at her, I see devil who cares, colonizing the ground cleared for our forecast forest with feigned innocence, patting down sand with ample tail, to build the dam I'm swirled in, swept from my great attempted escape by a love inseparable from self-preservation. At other times, I leave my body and float above the scene, a meek frozen anthropologist alien, marveling at the growth amidst living evidence of futility. Say fertility, do you know or honor no despair? Then I breathe, back to the broken heartwood of my body from this crusade to resurrect and save the tributaries that are already dying, califying, fossilizing, too heavy to lift however tight my grip. May these frequent visits in art, in thought, in talk, compact the soil upon my old favorite haunts, where me and my songs used to all hang out. May even our snag stand as a monument of what love can do, host to happy families of beetles and worms, just not the one we had planned, who died on the vine. It's not about her now, and it's not about any new her either, beautiful as they are to the fellow humans in here. It's not about the words by which we call God, but the beauty I can find from a hurt that can't be taught. The only way to make this broken support worth it is to become a better person from it. I can't forget it all comes to nothing, yet I'll keep trying, if nothing's the only thing.
A very confusing poem indeed! What are you saying? I would love to understand all the emotions you behold. You are going to have an amazing journey nonetheless! Love you!