The Tree

•

Last week in the house,
nothing left to say,
or everything,

she unable to speak anymore
because of the water
in the lungs, the oxygen
tank, the morphine,

we take each other's hands
and look out the window
at the children walking by,
the trucks thundering past,

look, she says,
her good hand pointed outward,
March 16th,
first buds on the tree,

—I wouldn't have
noticed them—

as if to say,
see, I made it,
you bastards,

that winter to end
all winters,

breast cancer,
Bush in the White House,
invasion of Iraq,
as if that not enough,
bone cancer, lung cancer,

that tree, budding with
first color,
that now I will
always notice,

first tendril of spring,
the promise of summer,

she didn't make it,
died nine day later,

though the tree once again
extends its trunk ever so slightly
toward the light

bird already perched
on top of one swaying branch,
roots planted deep
into the compost of everything,

as if fertilized by her ashes
spread over the earth
in a ceremony
we devised later that year
in her honor,

Nora Jones song, Marge Piercy
poem and the Bhgavad Gita,
the death in life
and the life in death,

the next generation of leaves
so beautiful today
I think there must be a reason
why every cultures grants the partner
a year for mourning,

you healthy people
don't know what you have,
I remember her saying
on the subway stairs, exhausted,

and yet she found the strength
to point to the tree,
her crowning act,
that winter day,

in a lifetime of crowning acts,
a lifetime of giving,

her hunger to live,
that gesture
all the more poignant
because for only a moment,

those branches
as if the very sap of her tears
was coursing
through them,

all that year searching for her
In the parks,
library, streets
of the city,

at the funeral not thinking
I could find the words,
and yet finding the words,
love, justice, socialism, forever,

coming home at night
to the empty house,
going to work
every morning,

angry at her
for leaving and not giving us a message
how it was where she was,
following people who looked like her
in the street like a stalker

and yet this tree not noticed
unfolding all this time
like a character in
a mystery novel

where the answer
to the mystery is maybe
somewhere you least
expect it

this tree
outside my window,
autumn, winter,
spring, summer,

this tree that I gaze
out upon

as I wake today
from a dream
in which I am
running,

as if she has
become
the tree,

or somehow
the tree has become
her.