After Sky Through Trees by Lois Dodd
If I declare that the woods hold a door,
that the red earth sprouts stalks, shivers
like a teenage girl, twisted and fallen,
would you ask how we can get
through it, how so young a girl can
feel so much despair, how trees can
slice the air like that, how the sky
becomes plastic, almost silver
instead of blue? If you climb this hill
of disarray, are you drawn to the door,
do you crave it, even if you don’t know
what lies on the other side, even if your face
turns to glass, sharp and echoing?
Sit down. We’ll picnic. Bread.
Wine. All the letters of the alphabet
slopping like soup from our hands.
Was there a house there once? I swear
I see a barn caught aloft in branches,
in a swirl of lines. We’re all headed
for that door. It looks so clean here,
not a rope astray, not a feather dropped.
No pistol. No whip. No wet cloth
bound across the mouth. The trees not
silhouettes of us. Not our story.
Our story lies on the other side of that door.
Maybe we’ll find pain, a gleam of loveliness,
a girl sitting breathless in a room.
