i’ve been away lately
and i can’t tell you where
i’ve gone. i’m not quite sure
to be honest. it’s a lonely
place, that’s all i know.
i wish there were more

to say. in this place there is more
nothing than anything else; and lately
i’ve begun to count it all because i want to know
so i can tell just how much nothing there is where
i go when i am so lonely the word lonely
is what i feel closest too. surely,

this is not where i belong. surely,
my mind whispers, here, there is no more
nothing i can count, as my loneliness
multiplies. lately,
it multiplies exponentially. where
does it end? i want to know.

but i fear if i knew
i would end. should the shore
know where
the sea ends? more
questions than these lately
enter my lonely

place; and i am still alone.
i believe everyone deserves to know
someone has thought of them lately.
what a small and wonderful thing to be sure
of. there isn’t much more
worth knowing, no matter who, no matter where

you are, than that where
you are, you are thought of. loneliness
cannot touch that. although i know more
than anyone perhaps; it tries. it says, no
one cares though. and, are you sure
it was fondly? and, then why haven’t you spoken lately?

i said i’ve gone where i am very lonely.
and the more i say the less you know.
yet i am sure you’ve thought of me lately.

life was like a penny rusting on the side of the road
for her with the reddening hair like a little girl’s cheeks
on the first valentine’s day she receives a flower; even
if it is from her neighbor whose mother made him. a gift
is a gift is a gift is a gift she says, a penny is good luck;
she picks the penny up and puts it in her pocket.

things collected on the roadside, things fallen from pockets;
people are always walking, not the same people or same roads,
but always someone somewhere. looking for love or luck
or esteem or success or someone they miss, with cheeks
they used to press their lips against; such people are gifts
one cannot just forget. no, not ever forget, not even

if they want to. it might be fair, might make it even,
but even so. there is a man somewhere emptying pockets,
not his own but those of others. he is the sort with a gift
of distraction— a tendency toward thievery, he roams roads
like a wolf in his own clothing, he could steal the blush from a cheek
and get away with it. some would call him lucky

but he isn’t. most people we call lucky
really aren’t. there is a woman in an office evening
the edges of her skirt; she puts make-up on her cheeks
and lips every morning, under her eyes, too. her pocket
purse is worth more than all of the trinkets on the road,
and every Christmas she buys a child in need a gift

and gives it to a red-haired girl behind a desk covered in gifts
for dozens of children in need who no one thinks are lucky.
all the ride home she wonders what it would cost for a road
with less potholes; the thieving man would like a life of even
motions, less running and looking behind for hands in pockets
of people realizing. he wants to go home, kiss the cheeks

of his children, to smile at them, say, ‘come to papa, cheeky
things,” and tell them that he has brought better gifts
home than last year— any gifts. in the pocket
of the red hair girl there was a penny of maybe luck
and a ring that was a promise— that no matter what, even
if the world crumbles, she wouldn’t walk alone its road.

what good are rosy cheeks? why give gifts?
who cares what’s in a pocket? who needs luck?
what if no one gets even? maybe we only pass along the road.

here is a tree in a jar for you; i’ve been growing
it for twenty years. it began in my fingers, it began
with roots as thin and blue as veins beneath skin;
it branched out on my inside like small receivers,
like octopus tentacles, sticking to every feeling i’ve felt,
and pulsing it through me like heart beats.

this tree has endured suffering; it has been beaten
by storms, by fierce rainfall— great winds growing
stronger and stronger in moments of time. it has felt
the sting of lightning striking once, only to begin
again to feel nothingness, which it received
just as harshly; you’d know if you’d felt it in your skin.

did you know the largest organ in your body is your skin?
can you imagine what it was like, to be a rhythmic beat
against your mother’s abdomen, a message received
by an almost sixth-sense? you were a little growing
ambiguity. no one, not she, not you, could even begin
to imagine anything about you; what you would feel,

what you’d look like, how you’d make them feel.
sometimes i close my eyes, pretend i have iguana skin;
i sink into my covers or the sand or grass; i begin
to spin and spin, i get tangled up in drum beats,
in my roots, in auburn tendrils. cocooned, i grow;
i’m changing. i can become something new; receive

myself anew. like renewing vows; i’ll receive
me again. the jar is a small one. how will i feel
when it is gone from my bookshelf? its spot will grow
dusty; settling over gray, losing color like aging skin.
when you take it, take it fully, do not begin
to and then waver. the tree changes color; beet

red when i am feeling love, white when feeling beaten
by the world. my mother says i should receive
peace in the energy around me. i say i should begin
to give more of me away, lighten myself, feel
emptied, clear-minded. i take in too much through skin,
with its every breath— look— the tree grows.

hear its beat, beat, beat; it calls you to receive.
my little tree, my beginning, and all i’ve ever felt.
with every breath on my skin, watch, the tree grows.

Momma took us to church
every Sunday, where the pews smelled
like the old ladies’ perfume and the fear
of God. The preacher stood above
us all and waved his arms like an angry
father. I doodled on the offering

envelope. I had nothing to offer,
at nine, at ten, when the church’s
steeple was a needle ripping into an angry
sky, awoken too early, like me, smelling
the air: God’s tears about to fall from above,
fall until it floods, fall until we fear

it is the end of the world. I feared
the darkness. Momma said I offered
light to everyone near, around and above
me: I was so short. The boys in church
teased me, and I told them they were smelly.
When I was sad I just looked angry.

One morning the anger
went away. I woke up afraid:
a nightmare. It was Sunday, the smell
of pine needles slipped in, and offered
me a crisp breath of winter. Church
begins in an hour, the clock above

my head ticked. Above
all I wanted sleep; I got angry,
and then I heard them. The church
bells. At first I thought, fearfully,
something had fallen. My offered
wail broke into the air heavy with the smell

of winter, that wonderful cool and roasty smell…
I sat down, hands clasped. I looked up, above
me. I thought, that wasn’t the offering
for me: screams, fear, and anger,
no. It was me, in joy and peace and fearlessness.
I walked the long road to the church.

I’m done offering You my anger,
I said. I smelled His tears falling from above.
Let my loving fear be a song for you, like bells in a church.

I got a package
today. A small brown
box tied in red string.
I cradled it in my arms
like an infant, like a gift
beneath the Christmas tree.

It’s a shame that trees
should die for packages.
For every million gifts
how many trees’ brown
trunks must be axed by the arms
of men? I pulled the string,

and down slid red string
like down fall the trees
in the unarmed
woods. The package’s
thick rained-upon-bark brown
paper peeled from the gift

and the gift
lay bare, stringless.
It was another brown
box. In my window a tree
cried. What a puzzling package;
I crossed my arms.

From the thinking pose my arms
broke and I, gifted
with a mind of neatly packaged
recipes for the everyday task, unstrung
an idea to dig deeper like tree
roots: scissors. Brown

handled scissors tore through brown
paper like swimmer’s arms
slice through water, like trees
divide sky. I wanted my gift.
And neither paper nor string
could forever hide the package.

The trees whispered, we gave you that gift,
with our brown bark, with our bare arms.
My small red-string-tied package.

“Daddy how long does an elephant
remember for?” That’s what he asked;
at nine years old. To know that answer—
those were the candles on his birthday cake,
the smoke from the flames gone out.
“Take me too the zoo,

let me see,” he said. But the zoo
was closed that time of night. “The elephants
are sleeping,” his father said, turning out
the light. “You should be too. Now don’t ask
again. Another day. Did you enjoy the cake?”
Well what did he care to answer

that for? Now thirty he thinks, are there answers
to anything? Or is the world all chaos, all zoo?
Animals turned loose? No roses, no presents, no cake;
only laughing hyenas, roaring lions, stampeding elephants.
He wished he could forget. He wished he’d never asked.
Sometimes he wished he’d never gone out

the front door. Sometimes he let it out
in screams, in fists in faces; “You won’t answer?”
he’d yell; at the sky, at the street. “Well who asked
you anyway?” But no one replied; he was in a zoo,
his very own cage. And the elephants
stared at him, from the mantelpiece, crying, “It’s all cake;

It’s all birthdays and parties and cake,
don’t give up.” But the lights were all out
again. And what did the elephants
know? What could they answer?
What did you learn in a zoo?
“Say would you ask

me,” he asked
them, “Did I enjoy the cake?”
“They don’t serve cake at the zoo,”
said the elephants. “They don’t go out
of their way for all that. What’s the answer
though, anyway?” They’re curious, elephants.

“They let the zoo— all the animals— out,”
he thought. He’d asked all he could; he’d had his cake.
And they didn’t need the answer; they remembered, they were elephants.

On the night of the lunar eclipse,
in a little apartment outside of the city,
there was a man and a woman,
a piano and a typewriter.
The woman wrote her mother,
as the man leaned on ivory.

His lips are always ivory,
she wrote, her eyes eclipsed
from him, who looked. Any mother
would have swooned to see a city
man so look at her daughter. The typewriter
kissed the letters from the woman’s

fingers to the page the woman
slipped so gently, in all of its ivory
vacant-ness, between the typewriter’s
teeth. She is the moon of my sky, eclipse
of my lifetime, the man played. And the city
lowered its eyes to hum like a mother’s

lullaby to her son. When his mother
passed away he thought he’d lost all women;
then he’d met her. She was country and city,
mountain and valley. She was ivory
and sharps and flats eclipsing
all sounds but the kiss of her typewriter

and even the typewriter
could see it. She even spoke like his mother.
And she knew he was a chance, an eclipse,
a window of rare opportunity for any woman;
it just happened to be her ivory
smile he saw that day in the city.

In the hustle and bustle of city
sidewalks, they were caught up like typewriter
ribbon that tangled; and the world went ivory,
and that night she phoned and told her mother;
her finger round the cord she sang to the woman,
He came between the sun and I like an eclipse.

I love her like ivory, he played to his mother.
Thank God for this city, kissed the typewriter.
What they had, that man and woman; it couldn’t be eclipsed.

The little tree said, “When
I grow up I want to be a mountain.”
The other trees said, “You cannot
ever grow to be so wide and tall;
that’s foolish. Be a tree and be happy.”
But the little tree believed.

The little tree said, “I believe
I will be a mountain one day, when
I’m older!” And time passed, and happily,
the little tree grew. As the mountains
stayed the same, the tree grew taller.
The other trees said, “You cannot

be a mountain. You just cannot.
And you ought not to believe
it. You will only get hurt. We are taller;
listen.” He shook to the root when
one day, he saw snowcaps. He was happy
just to see a little more of the mountains.

“Gee, look at those mountains,”
the young tree said. “Some men cannot
climb them. When they do, they’re so happy;
they take pictures, they pose; they believe
they can do anything. When
I am that tall,

and I will be that tall,
I won’t shake or sway or fear a man’s axe; mountains
always remain. Mountains are there, when
nothing else is.” The other trees could not
understand him. They could not believe
him. They feared in the end, he would be unhappy.

And time passed and he was still happy.
And of all of the trees he grew tallest.
But despite his undying believing
he still wasn’t a mountain.
An older tree then, he said, “When
I was young they were right. I really cannot.”

But his belief had pushed him beyond the mountains.
His happiness had grown him widest and tallest.
When they saw him, they saw what he’d become, not what he could not.