I lay it all at your roots,
Mulch me, honey, here is my shame
and my showboatin’
Here is my doubt, my fear, my Not Enough,
my jaded stare, my I’ve been there,
there is nothing new under the sun,
here is my where’s MY epiphany?
Here is the one who don’t believe
there is anything in that black bag for me.
Here are the ruby slippers I forget I’m wearing.
You, so beautiful in your weathering,
Every fire has made a new map into your being,
the topography of destruction, creation, re-creation.
Granddaughter,
I can tell you everything and nothing,
except what happens when
you stand in one place and bear constant witness,
when it is not possible for you to step aside
from the fires that must reach
through what is finished
to break open
the seed of your destiny.
All I see here before me,
the etching in your landscape, too.
You took in dragon’s fire, not of your choosing,
Scraping and strafing your interior with a shock and awe for a visiting enemy.
These were not your weapons, your language, but no blame.
I did not choose whether it was heaven’s lightening
or a cigarette butt
that sparked the many fires
that have touched me,
and there have been many.
Look at me.
Look at you.
Look at us,
a couple of charred crones.
I never met a tree that was victim to the wild.
The raised scar on a horse is called proud flesh.
Wear your proud flesh proud, daughter.
You would not have stepped toward me
if I had not worn these fires on my being—
they are my being now, mark a story on my trunk
that begs your reading,
and the story is different for each soul who sits at my feet.
Wear your story as a gift—let it be a pearl or a cipher,
hidden in a million jeweled boxes,
each unlocked by one of a million
different songs of longing.
But look at me again, and tell me what you see.
Decide which side you lean against.
The burned crone, yes, bears witness,
but there are supple green fronds sprouting
if you look higher.
I am tree, I am river, I am lungs,
I am fractal, roots down, arms up,
I grow in layers like you,
not straight up, but from the inside out.
So stand still, let life burn through you,
bow
to the many parts that have germinated
through knowing fire intimately.
Yes, you may run your palm
against the Braille of my backside,
the part hidden from the bright path,
stay there as long as you need,
take in the glyphs of worm and flame.
Your story is here, yes, and hers, and his,
no two alike as every shift of shadow
offers up another poem,
the sound of what each of you came to hear.
But please don’t fix yourself to my broken
and ashen
and gorgeous back,
because you will miss this,
this seam of life running its river up my trunk,
folded into itself like elephant skin,
bearing life, only life, along this insistent
cluster of branches flying from my throat.
There is nothing in your own weathering that is not holy,
as are all things holy, when truly seen.
Whatever you bring, all of your woes, and hopes,
every story of every regret and unlived life,
just make mulch of yourself at my roots,
which long for nothing else but what falls
to feed them in its release.
Because there is nothing, nothing
that falls in the forest
that does not nourish the life
waiting beneath the soil.
Eilish Nagle
Santa Cruz Mountains
Oct, 2013
