Are you, are you
Coming to the tree
Where the dead man called out
For his love to flee
Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met at midnight
In the hanging tree
—James Newton Howard, “The Hanging Tree”
A muss of flies showers his open mouth
where the blood crusts.
Dead, he will not speak.
I can see how pain chewed the neck.
I rest my head against the tree, sleep
and wake in his call.
Like legs of a spider, his nature extends,
saying,
Like you I once harbored beauty
saying,
Like you my beauty takes the kingdom of blackness.
It is dawn in the man’s eyes,
a cavern, a slow thaw to memory.
I look
and look
and look.
Who is to say what death is or is not?
He has his limbs, a sky overlooking…
I know he is dead, nothing will change
but still I whisper in his ear,
Breathe. I want you to breathe.