Willow

Remembering a whole day lost in the shade of a willow

Beside a human-made lake,

Designed to look like a lake, harboring imported fish.

The dog was there, too,

Integral part of what was us,

Sniffing the ground where something dead had lain.

We found it later,

Desiccated skin and boney spine,

And tossed it back into its unnatural water.

 

I should have tied the dog’s leash to a branch of the willow

That stretched off camera, toward the future, this moment,

Instead of to the trunk with its roots twining downward,

Knotting us to that spot in time,

Eternal part of the tree’s shadow.

 

It could still be there,

Our willow, by the artificial lake,  

Framed against the darkling background

Like a painting of Calvary.

 

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