Under the trees
I sit beneath the maple trees,
whose leaves color the rain and
fall with infinite slowness.
Meanwhile memories are bursting open
like jars of fragnant pickles.
First:
there I was and next to me there she was. Which She? Who was this? And where was I? Which song played on the radio? It must have been a radio hit, a popular love song, "I will love you, truely madly deelpy", that almost believes it's own prosaic verses. As much as I almost wanted to believe that moment would last forever when I was almost in love with love as I was with that temporal beloved.
Second:
there I was sitting under a tree. Which tree? What tree? Whose tree? Was it the tree of knowing that lies beyond all this unknowing, Buddha's Bodhi tree? Or was it the tree from which Eve was plucking her apple? What poems did I recite? Was it Rilke's Autumn or Neruda's Ode to Wine as I ate that fruit. What fruit was that? An apple, a pear or that deep redness that she hid between her legs?
Third:
there I was leaning against the window watching water trickle down. What water? Was this the rain? Or simply deep grief? What did I say to myself? What did others say to me? And did it ever stop raining as I sat there, with my veins slashed, in my blood drenched shirt and feasted upon myself, pickled with memories of sitting, walking and kissing under trees.
I close the jars, get up and walk away. Leaves continue to fall in the rain, under the trees.
My Poems
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