The Tree that Was

I hadn’t really climbed that tree,
(or any tree)
but I’d seen how she brushed
the silver stubble on the cheek of the moon,
seen where the first shoot
that dared to break through
into a sunlight it always knew
would be waiting,
where that first shoot had ascended
clambering over darkened rings;

they said up there I could put my mouth
on the lips of the cloud
and drink from rivers gone dry,
they said up there the wind
would sit on my shoulder
and nuzzle my neck as it read
redacted poems in my book,
they said it was a place where shadows could not reach,
where that broken voice would begin to fade,
a place where I could knit sunbeams,
into mittens for my trembling heart,
a place where I could learn to love again;

but this morning there she was,
like a queen felled,
lying twisted on her side,
squirrels still scampering along her bleeding legs,
people stepping over her naked crown,
shouting into the silence
that hid at the back of her leaves
like frightened spores;

and i who had never climbed that tree,
(or any tree)
crying on the kerb,
the wind watching listless
from the shadows
that began to creep into her knowing eyes,
tears pooling into muddy streams
that swallowed the unravelling clouds,
half-words still tangled in her fingers
and love,
like a secret whispered by the dead,
like a tear perched on the very edge,
love still unlearned,
stranded in the alleys between the stars,
lost in the endless blue of its path,
with no way,
with no way to come back home.