Memorial Day Weekend

1. The elm and pine, bobolink and chickadee, coneflower and bergamot

watch cars gallop into their arms, skin and noise leaking out

skin not yet tattooed with the sun, legs not yet painted with the Earth,

quick steps, pressured words punching their way through plastered faces

2. Bergamot receives a nose and a tongue, ears are pulled to the clover grass,

their words unfold, delivering themselves like a cool knife over butter pad lips

trees exhale into lungs held close to the chest, inflating their pink balloons 

to replace spackled cracks with elastic patches, for breath to bounce

3. Their metal shells soften and spill, body lines blur with dirt and air

remembering again their leaves and petals and feathers and roots

Making sense without logic, words without tongues, it’s everything now 

and nothing then, they’re the elm and pine, wind and clouds, rain and river

4. Sunday arrives as a shepherd dog, spilled skin and bones take shape again,

the elm watches lines of cars march away, rushing back to the noise,

back to quick steps, pressured words, frozen expression of plastered faces,

tight chests and tighter lungs, until the melody of the chickadee calls home

(words from the Elm)

Don’t go, already, again. You just remembered yourself

by standing beneath my branches and laughing

you’ve just untied yourself to me, finally sitting together

in this moving current of stillness, learning you can float

I saw the glass top of the water in your eyes, as you realized

the water reflecting from below wants to hold you in the sun

you gave up treading water and fearing depth,

pleasant and unpleasant lost their definitions in your body

finding what's real is as wide as long, where living

feels like everything at once in every color.