I cannot see it, but it grows behind me and owns my spine.
Sometimes I think it must be a birch,
when it wills me to fall in the weeping attitude of a birch in
the rain.
The earth yanks at my roots.
The wind slaps me, flays my paper bark.
No birds will rest here, my thousand limbs are a flinging up
but I cannot run, as now
the tree is stone-still, white marble, like Bernini’s girl
going cold in her bad bargain to elude the god.