Pollock might’ve said when he splattered summer’s last shiver, satisfied, sweating, searching for his Pabst blue ribbon among his cans arrayed in the garage before beer pong’s rush was amplified by Smells Like Teen Spirit and we parked our Ten Speeds for good and then an English teacher said Nothing’s as it seems about Macbeth about men becoming forest and forest becoming men and birth wasn’t quite being born and that’s when the first sledgehammer struck, when This and That crashed together, when a wall meant less than its damage, when negative space solidified and we got used to its bitterness like what’s burnt on a marshmallow or Jagermeister’s licorice grimace. Now, we’re older, now we’re mom, the same age now as she was the summer we begged for a treehouse: Let’s make a fort under the willow tree instead, carrying loads back and forth, In to Out and back again, after roller skating in the basement listening to records Donna Summer Toot toot hey beep beep or Stevie Nicks Just like the white winged dove Sings a song Sounds like she’s singing Who baby who perched on a dark limb with space between for us to twirl You go first around the lally column around the willow’s trunk around the treehouse we never built but we imagined would’ve felt like floating on a raft borne by a cloud or winging like an owl among the boughs gliding through our canopy’s fractals to circle circle circle our tree with invisible thread like spun sugar thrown by a baker sloughing rain like paint benevolently from above with a can in hand and from that vantage point flying likely looks the same as September’s first leaf signing the wind’s name
