Poem-A-Day #158 : Wood (Part 5 : The Seventh Seal)

You can read Part One of this crazy-fest HERE.


Wood (Part 5 : The Seventh Seal)

My grandmother was one of the people with skin like gauze : it pulled and seemed to thin like cotton batting or those fake spiderwebs that pop up around Halloween : those are probably just cotton batting : they sometimes have little plastic spiders in them but they are actually weird spider-shaped rings that you can put on your fingers :

I would run my fingers over her arm I think in an attempt to understand her years : like counting rings I was trying to figure out what had happened in this spot and when and what if anything was seen or remained : she would let me and I think she understood better than I did about what I was looking for this thing that was unfindable and unfathomable :

We're talking about death again : my grandmother is dead : both of my grandmother's are dead actually : I re-watched The Seventh Seal the other day and I am horrified and fascinated by the danse macabre that ends the movie : a string of loved ones tied together dancing off over the darkening hills : led by death : towards death :

Perhaps we are all obsessed with mortality : there's a tree on the edge of a garden on the campus I work at and the crown of the tree is all bare branches and it's the first week of August so those branches are safely assumed to be dead : the bottom older bigger branches are full of the late summer green leaves that resemble leather int heir texture and thickness :

I am obsessed with cycles above all else : the shape of reoccurrence : do you know the thought experiment about how we awake each day a new person but with all the old person's memories and so we don't notice : the idea is that we cannot ever know fully that we awake the same person who went to sleep the night before because we were unconscious and how could we know :

When I walk out of these woods and leave whomever has collected around me behind how can I know they simply don't cease to exist or they know that I continue in any capacity : it's a tricky thing this rabbit hole : a briar even : the thorns on this tree for instance they don't really get a chance to grab at much but when they do...man they grab at everything :

Trees are like that : we forget they exist until it's too late : bears too and death : we forget it until we are on a beach with our chess board and we have no options left : I always forget about the moment in Seventh Seal where death chops down the tree to get at the actor in its branches : death does not give a shit about your attempts to hide : it was time for the tree to go too :

The Seventh Seal

Poem-A-Day #154 : Wood

Dakota R. Garilli, editor at the amazing IDK, sent me a list of suggestions for Poem-A-Day topics. One was just the word 'wood'. It was both the least interesting and most full of possibilities as I have always found trees to be fascinating and weird.

This month will be an experiment. It will go badly. It will be transcendent. I am writing a 31-part poem called Wood. The poem has no purpose other than to be everything and nothing. It is an ars poetica, an explanation, an attempt. It is modeled after A. R. Ammons' Garbage.

This is a conversation. Feel free to respond.


Wood

We should probably start somewhere obvious like a forest : that feels good this time of year : the shade from the full green leaves would cast a pattern of green light across the bare earth below : leaves from winter would have mulched themselves and everything would smell like earth and growing : everywhere in other words alive :

Here those forests would be Aspen and pine but I'm sure you have your own concept of 'forest' and you should just go with that : the actualities are not important just be in that space of sunlight filtering down hitting you and be in that quiet that only people who live in cities think is quiet for a bit : is your breathing regular :

I ask because everything around you is alive : because it is in a state of motion : I ask you about your breathing because you are in it and it is coursing through your bloodstream as we speak about it : did you know that it only takes 30 seconds for alcohol to hit the brain : did you know that the lungs are hands holding on to the air for dear life :

So why have I brought you out here : am I going to kill you and leave your body to nourish these trees or for the wolves to tear apart and feed their young : I might have an axe in my car I might have a gun you won't know that the language doesn't reveal what's in pockets or trunks : if only it could : I don't know why we're here any more than you do :

That's the trick though : I'm supposed to KNOW what I'm doing here have a plan a map a big red 'X' that marks some spot on the map that is the place that I am going to dig : I don't have the arms for digging : I'm more of a burier of objects histories knowledge : I could bury us and then we could really think about things :

In this moment the trees are probably swaying in the breeze I do hope you have a breeze in your forest they are so much more interesting when they move in ways we can see : I want to talk about the trees and why they are here for me and you : why we are here for them : this isn't some eco-bull shit please don't think that I want to hug anything : get away from me :

I want to thesis about why I come back to this again and again : the roughness of the bark on my hands and the veins showing in the leaves : I want to discuss this with you : I'm not sure how to begin that though I will plant the idea here and I will come back tomorrow and the next day and the next and I will see what sort of tree has begun :

Poem-A-Day #83 : Spring Break

Spring Break

The slope comes to the riverbank
where it is absorbed by the rounded pebbles
and the smell of damp

New trees pop from the edges of clear
they are leafing and basically twigs in mud
placed there by a child or parent of a child

Sound of frogs and of birds
cicadas cocophaning in the limbs of larger wood
they will all fall soon make a snow of bodies

How fucking clear is this water
and cold
it fills with flash bang fish and noise

The clouds catch on mountains and pull seams
like two hands ripping off a tank top
everything pours into our eyes