"You ask
to lead me to me
to lead you next
to colors all wet:
bark saturated brown,
brown-green
where lichen scurries up the trunk
of a tree that needs it.
You make me wonder about thirst,
the way things work together.
Boughs once empty fill with birds
in rapid flickering flight until beat, wingbeat,
winged threat: a magpie I try to wish away.
I ask, do not disappear.
That is no kind of apology
and I have never been a forgiver.
The green part of me never leaves
however I find that it remains with you.
However I find it in you
you must remember I am not a soft woman.
You’ll seek the mother in me
but expect to see splinters,
rolled margins.
Together we have never been so alone,
like ladders, like messengers with another
answer. The ink-stained hand holds
heartache no longer. It’s been set
and pressed down, mapped & scattered."
