Syracuse, 1973–1975
Maple or oak or elm? By now I know
how to tell them apart. Yet when I think
of falling in love as a young woman
I think of my confusion naming them—
maple, oak, elm? One of them always grew
outside the bedroom window where I lay
waiting for passion to wash over me.
What did I know of love but that I gave
my body for the chance to play
the happy heroine of a love story?
But I wasn’t happy, I was lonely,
already knowing this was the wrong love
or rather the wrong life-story for me.
So I lay there, studying the tops of trees,
the map of branches that might orient me
as to where I was going by myself
after this heartbreak. With my eye, I traced
the traffic of the branches as they climbed
toward their destination in the sky,
losing myself in their hectic movements.
Until his love cry brought me back to earth,
down through the branches, the open window,
stealing like light across the bedroom floor,
over the rumpled sheets to this woman
who was and wasn’t me, who didn’t know
where she was going or whom she might be:
maybe the burning maple showing off,
or mighty oak synonymous with strength,
or vague elm whose unmistakable shape
can only be discerned from a distance.