the body palimpsest

you landed on my limbs, a little poet bird. your light frame defied gravity and made my branches bow. me...a kind hearted tree, unknowingly awaiting the paper mill. how was i to see i'd become vellum so quickly, i was looking to the clouds for cracks and openings. your tiny talons inscribed your presence.. each word, each breath.. onto me. my body palimpsest....my heart a manuscript. look closely and you will see me. i am every leaf, every season, every ring, all the love i feel inward, sink downward and send outward into the sky. if you could have held me up to the sun you could have seen me. I have transformed into pages that reveal words that tell new stories...create new beliefs. love is beautiful when you see it that way, when we want it that way. you are there on my surface, the deepest etching, the newest entry telling our tale. i too want to let go, to know what that means for me. i want to feel the dance of swaying in the wind, the passion of drinking from the river. i want to see the beauty in you flying away into the horizon, the bird that built a nest in my leaves for a season. now that nest is empty and i will house it until the wind takes it from me. i never intended to keep you like a cage, but your eyes reflected bars not branches. I wept the day I understood that is how you saw me. you were the loveliest bird to me and I just wanted to be your poet tree, naively I wanted to be home to each seasons nest, to continue to grow more branches and leaves. I am an old oak tree, perhaps I make rings too slowly. Instead I am reduced to pulp and paper…parchment for poetry. What I would give to see the blue around the shape of your wings again. To feel every breeze as a breath, every dropping leaf a relief, falling whispers beauty…a song of love promised on the feathers of a bird who arrived and departed from an expanding horizon. How I loved you then..how I love you still. Is today the day little bird?

11.2009