The Two Trees,” by Larry Levis My name in Latin is light to carry & victorious. Id read late in the library, then Walk out past the stacks, rows, aisles Of books, where the memoirs of battles slowly gave way To case histories of molestation & abuse. The black windows looked out onto the black lawn. ~ Friends, in the middle of this life, I was embraced By failure. It clung to me & did not let go. When I ran, brother limitation raced Beside me like a shadow. Have you never Felt like this, everyone you know, Turning, the more they talked, into . . . Acquaintances? So many strong opinions! And when I tried to speak— Someone always interrupting. My head ached. And I would walk home in the blackness of winter. I still had two friends, but they were trees. One was a box elder, the other a horse chestnut. I used to stop on my way home & talk to each Of them. The three of us lived in Utah then, though We never learned why, me, acer negundo, & the other One, whose name I can never remember. Everything I have done has come to nothing. It is not even worth mocking, I would tell them And then I would look up into their limbs & see How they were covered in ice. You do not even Have a car anymore, one of them would answer. All their limbs glistening above me, No light was as cold or clear. I got over it, but I was never the same, Hearing the snow change to rain & the wind swirl, And the gulls cry, that it could not fly out of. In time, in a few months, I could walk beneath Both trees without bothering to look up Anymore, neither at the one Whose leaves & trunk were being slowly colonized by Birds again, nor at the other, sleepier, more slender One, that seemed frail, but was really Oblivious to everything. Simply oblivious to it, With the pale leaves climbing one side of it, An obscure sheen in them, And the other side, for some reason, black bare, The same, almost irresistible, carved indifference In the shape of its limbs As if someones cries for help Had been muffled by them once, concealed there, Her white flesh just underneath the slowly peeling bark —while the joggers swerved around me & I stared— Still tempting me to step in, find her, And possess her completely.
Posted on: Mon, 04 Nov 2013 21:40:06 +0000