I turned from the brink
and grew very tall.
Entering a forest,
I brushed with my fingers
the soft spire of every uppermost leaf.
I came upon you there –
a resident of the wood, a handsome tree.
Thinking at first that I was the wind,
you rustled hello with branches that breathed.
I folded my length beneath you;
for me, you spread a cloak of shade upon the green.
When I touched your bark-clad flank,
you woke into my world, skin from leaf.
The shudder of sap turning to blood in your veins
shook the birds from your hair,
and you fell, as if by ax, to me!
Then we talked about
the crystal self, clouds we have known,
ball lightening, what it’s like to die –
talking fast because we felt it near: change
coming to spin us into different dimensions,
booming like an iron wheel.
Soon you will be a wrinkle
on the surface of the sea, and I, a rose;
you will be yellow, and I, a lion’s roar.
We won’t even remember we once
were a giant, and a tree, and friends,
and talked; our conversation a fanfare
with and against that aleatoric moan,
that terrible blare, dark hymn of always,
music of the spheres.
Originally published at Fairy Tale Review.