Giving my name
Taddle Creek Park
I’m sitting under a beech – balmy –
Tree carved into its crotch. Next to Tree,
lovers’ initials in a heart. Beech thicker
than a man. It gives me a roof. Tree to climb.
Black ants crawl its trunk. Tree cut into, scarred –
its initials growing with it. Knobbed where they cut
off big limbs. Seams, bulbous growth. Thin branches
from thick. I push my hands into the bark.
I am cut, cutting into words.
Remembrance
In the middle of yoga the teacher
interrupts downward dog
for a few minutes of seated silence:
the whole library on hold.
We’re in the basement. I prefer
yoga’s own stillness. My friend
leaving a lifetime teaching to write
poetry – her last Remembrance Day
assembly. Final time leading a row
of children into the auditorium.
The principal talks peace but makes them
stand still enough to be filled
with Flanders Fields. (I was good
at standing still, readying myself for something.)
My friend tells me of Nathan who screams
in class as if a bayonet pierces his side.
She says to the children, Have you ever
been hurt? I have. She lets them see
her cry. The statue in the park tells us
courage is a man on horseback.
Grandfather, returned from the war,
beat Gran. (My uncle told my brother told
me.) For the woman in the far corner,
coming to yoga class is an act of courage.
Leaving her room, combat. Stillness
on any ordinary day, an act
of remembering and not. Letting
your spine fall into the ground.
