To The Girl Who Lives In A Tree

A letter in my mailbox says you’ve made it

to Honduras and I wonder what is the colour

of the wood you are chopping now.

When you left this city I wept for a year

down 14th Street across the Taconic Parkway

through the shingled birdcotes along Riverside Drive

and I was glad because in your going

you left me a new country

where Riverside Drive became an embattlement

that even dynamite could not blast free

where making both love and war became less inconsistent

and as my tears watered morning I became

my own place to fathom

While part of me follows you still thru the woods of Oregon

splitting dead wood with a rusty axe

acting out the nightmares of your mothers

creamy skin soot-covered from communal fires

where you provide and labour to discipline your dreams

whose symbols are immortalized in lies of history

told like fairy tales called power

behind the throne called noble frontier drudge and

we both know you are not white

with rage or fury but only from bleeding

too much while trudging behind a wagon and confidentially

did you really conquer Donner Pass with only a handcart?

My mothers nightmares are not yours but just as binding.

If in your sleep you tasted a child’s blood on your teeth

while your chained black hand could not rise

to wipe away his death upon your lips

perhaps you would consider then

why I choose this brick and shitty stone

over the good earth’s challenge of green.

Your mothers nightmares are not mine but just as binding.

We share more than a trap between our legs

where long game howl back and forth across country

finding less than what they bargained for

but more than they ever feared

so dreams or not, I think you will be back soon from Honduras

where the woods are even thicker than in Oregon.

You will see it finally as a choice too

between loving women or loving trees

and if only from the standpoint of free movement

women win

hands down.