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Begin with the image of tree branches black against the sky.

The blue between them vibrant as if blue were a sound.

The first time I sit on the grass beneath the tree

Is the last time I sit on the grass beneath the tree.

My arms form a circle around my legs.

I hold myself like a bundle of gathered sticks

About to collapse.

 

Above flow clouds whole and detached,

As if each were a separate memory

Dissolving away.

 

What is left?

My weight, subtracted from the earth,

Fled as if the morning after.

What remains is what matters from now on.

 

Overhead, branches flex in disarray,

Impossible black against too-bright blue,

An etching too sharp to remain,

An effigy of ending.

 

But underneath me, where I once sat,

The grass is thick with its opposite:

Arousal of wet soil,

Fever of splitting seed,

An increasing insistence,

Urgent, ungovernable,

Of endless

Return.

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