Bare-chested Blasphemous
in places named sacred
I lay beneath a tree
bigger around than
my mother’s laugh,
its boisterous bark
a textbook cover —
“History of the World, Part One” —
or the pages of a King James’
(too sheer for the weighty
divine).
I lay long there beneath branches,
bare-chested to sky and worm,
long enough to feel shadow growing
cold over my belly’s sag.
I closed my eyes to savor
the last of the warm light, and
I saw: an ovary, growing
sinewy tentacle to reach womb,
and on, to reach
symmetry, and that
side-by-side symmetry
reminded me
of a tree, and
of the solar center around which
planets we call “Jupiter” and
“Mercury” run,
so water can run,
and in droplets find cloudy communion.
Most fall to ocean waves
or mountaintops,
and what a whale spewed out in fantastic
multiples from blowhole
becomes licking place for river falls,
becomes soaking wet sweater
soiled, and roots like a
tangled web of radio wires,
crackling fuzzy about
war-torn air raids, or tearing songs for
2 a.m. dance transcendence
to tell stories: of
this place,
this time,
we overcame –
a seed got water,
and the beginning was over.
…
I sat in that tree’s
dark memory,
hearing for the sounds of
groaning bending wood to will,
scraping ax and chainsaw, repressed memories
from the end of childhood, bathroom floor,
blood crusted in puddles
and
branches-bells tolling
rings around rings
around gathering together
for cool safe salvation against sun,
against predator animal,
against non-religion
and
roots on spree, spread, spreading to find
colonies moist to suck and suckle
and cast net wide enough
to find difference
more similar than not.
In cycle terror
we carry trees
toward clear-cut death,
to crucified death.
Stand at rebellion!
Stretch bare-chested vertical,
cradled by big old tree, where
pounding water carries
hope
and my fingernail piece,
pulled jagged clean with teeth,
up to endless leaf and nest and
best views of what
came before,
and if we keep them,
what will come after.
(poem circa 2013, final edit 2021 / doodle by me 2020)
