Family Tree
A heart hacked once by lovesick teens,
they thought forever and for all to see,
this seal of love upon a tree—
two lobes plunging down to one.
The names long since forgot their names.
Now only hieroglyphs remain.
Where once the heartwood bled fresh sap,
a scab of feeling turned to bark.
These lovers careless of the pain,
the wounds inflicted by their names,
they deemed the heartwood would sustain,
if deeply carved, if fiercely felt.
Yet in the violence of their need,
they never thought about the tree—
nor could they know that love exceeds
what blade can carve, and wood can keep,
or any human heart contain
within the confines it would mark
on growing trunk, on living bark,
where all that does not change will break.
Now broken lies this shagged-bark elm
by love and lightning and disease.
And we who pass by strive to read
this rutted slate for hints and signs.
Who were they with the knife-sharp itch
they scratched upon the twisted bough?
Judging from the antiquity of the grooves,
whose stabbing edges now are smooth,
these nameless lovers could have been
my parents, or my parent’s parents.
Who can tell how many generations
passed this way, as we pass now.
What flares a moment, then fades away
is nothing real, the sages say.
But my fleeting flesh does beg to disagree.
For passion, though it plunged its blade
but once, has made a world for me
upon this age-old spreading tree.
That is what my presence here attests—
the tree remembers what the heart forgets.
by Richard Schiffman from What the Dust Doesn’t Know (Salmon Poetry 2017)
Cover design by Stephan Daigle, SIESTE AU JARDIN
Buy Link: https://www.salmonpoetry.com/details.php?ID=414&a=296
Leave a Reply