Willow

Some of the strands are turning. So
the willow behind the house is streaked
yellow and pale green, in the wash
of the Fall sunshine.

My life is so crowded with ghosts
that they don't even trouble me now. They stand
wistfully at stairways, vanishing if
I turn to look at them.

What can we say? That God, for his own
purposes, saves us for his own ends?
Better surely to take it for granted, than
to take it for that.

You sat at my feet and lovingly
laced up my shoes. I read you a poem.
The sky changed; the light moved
and crossed the room. If only
I could have died then. The rest is
footnotes and addenda: the last chapter
of a biography, which you read out of duty,
since they are all alike. He got sick and died.

It's dangerous to talk too long to willows.
Their arguments are twisty turny, and
they flicker in the sun. They will soon have you
agreeing that there is no difference
between a sparkle in the air and
the life of an honest man.
Trees don't think like we do.

Light through the yellow leaves,
the rattle of twigs in the shifting wind;
the creak of branches, rotten but green,
the sift of the crumbling bark.
Don't breathe the dust. Don't listen to the whisper.
Some things we shouldn't know.

From Dale Favier's first collection, Opening the World - published by Pindrop Press.

Review to follow.