As a Child, You Worried You Would Be an Orphan

Now in your fifties, the parents have passed

to that passive phrase, that elusive place.

The branches you bent to find your way home

have disappeared. Taken by blight or overgrowth.

With the grinning blade of the butcher knife,

you lean into the proverbial forest,

worry not how you will eat, but how to hunger.

You start by building a lean-to, discover

that perfect branch you mistake for the forest

welcoming you. Survival, a man once said, depends

on clear-cutting everything thicker than your thumb,

thinner than your wrist. Surprise what’s coming.

Sun what’s fruiting. Instead, you

slingshot stones at storm clouds

also thickening in the middle with age.

Pickle yourself with tannic acorns

until teeth crumb into orange dust.

Razor ankles with maps of yesterday.

Like Now and its friend Then,

you avoid thinking of your parents

tucking you in with the advice, “Everything

will be all right.” You know they didn’t

believe their words, yet you repeat them

like a cardinal’s churlish chirp. You follow

the impulse that lures you to birdcall

and green leaf, to lean-tos and chop-downs,

to ivy and itch. It’s the same instinct

that has always throbbed: eat, write,

move, love, fight—until you join them.