I enter a half circle of trees like an apsidal choir
complete with an angel draped in towels.
It does not look like the traditional illustrations.
A heron unwrapping its wings announces
displeasure at my appearance. Other birds gather
symmetrically at the feeder like symbolic figures
in the portal doorways at Poiters, Amiens.
I feel something is required of me now that the trees
are famous in my memory and I think of the carvings
in limestone of strange beasts eating a transgressor,
but all I had to offer was loving the same woman
forty years; all I had in my hands was dogwood, rope.
|