3 by the Fire: December 2009

Thursday, December 31, 2009

Friday, December 25, 2009

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Sunday, December 20, 2009

Relieving the Cypress of Their Burden of Snow

Eight inches of perfect snowman snow, wet
and clumped on everything. Our row,
once tall and erect, now bent to the ground
in prayer, thin spines burdened by snow, branches
encased in its crust. When I grab the tops
of their bowed heads and shake each free
of their outer layer, bringing them down
with my weight then letting go, the trunks sway up
a foot, a foot and a half higher, bodies
like great defunct dinosaurs coming back to life.
Each branch I knock rises up like a fan in the wind;
gradually the whole line climbs back on its feet,
still bent and broken in places but no longer defeated
by the tremendous burden. The taller ones need me
to climb inside their bodies to rattle their bones
like a lover, bending the curve of their spine back far
the other way. The sun’s come out now and soon
the trees will forget this weight. But for now
I am happy, beloved among them, bathed in sweat,
looking for just the right place to release the pressure.

Friday, December 18, 2009

Rocio's Grandfather Up in a Tree, 1929

He was a burning bush of a man,
always bursting in flame, an ancient letter
in a unwritten book on the power of joy
in the face of stultifying catastrophe.
Spain was a rock face crumbling;
all the men had to find new ways
to make themselves useful. Women
were left to re-sing the old laws.
The children whited themselves out
with a brush. No one remembers the man
standing under our man in the tree,
hombre arbol. Some say he never existed,
an angel airbrushing itself into a photo.
The date 1929, the caption blank, the sun
either just coming up or one last time
throwing itself across the horizon line.
Rocio’s grandfather keeps his balance
by fingertipping buds, hat threatening
to fly off—the wind an elixir he drinks
openmouthed and shouting.