"….between the storm and the calm
between the nightmare and the sleeper
between the cradle and the reaper."
– John Agard, "Bridge Builder"
The oldest tree on our block came down as the last storm ̶
"a nor'easter, turf crosser!" ̶ swept through on buffalo wings.
It fell to rest on Mr. Sanchez' roof. Easy to assume its root
system was all surface, no heart. Mrs. Bourdy stepped outside
swinging: tenured trees feel locked in by city sidewalks; and vanities
like Mr. Sanchez' front lawn. The payback? hooded shoots infiltrating
his sewer lines, she tittered. Thy neighbor, your love.
Mrs. Bourdy watched the storm from her attic window. The tree
withstood 30 years of wind battery, leaf hang, her marriage
to Mr. Bourdy (deceased). One mounting last push, over the top,
the pleasures of grounding up ripped. No sap weep, willow
style. How long can long standing allegories be sustainable?
Mrs. Bourdy hadn't noticed bird nests in the tree. Squirrels, yes,
playing tag and performing homeless traffic scurry. And some
times a tacked Lost Dog note. So goes the neighborhood.
Anyone could harvest tree bark make wine corks, she'd read
somewhere, though no one shows up in her dead of night
with plug or bark carving knife intentions.
The tree fall dealt a 10 foot slash in the sidewalk; it leaned in
branching daze, earth crust privies exposed; drivers stopped
for Increíble! camera shots; a young man, they heard later,
not the screams, stepped on live power lines, cell sending
views. These new fangled hand devices, Mrs. Bourdy tsk
tsked, cradles so full of ourselves.
Back inside she heard a chain saw buzzing her bow
windows. Heaven's gorilla! how did that fly thru pass the particle
screen? And what was taking the sanitation trucks so long,
gathering passed overs for bagpipes? fixing years left how limbs
were, give or take a bed mate, a tree hug.
After awhile nothing seems amiss.
So your house roof leaks! catch a falling chord: cloud howl ruin
day clean take turns like on line ancestors; bare mortals, we classify
leaf vacancy, Move on! Let mediums search parallels for clogged
artery parts, the walnuts you stock in that wind breaker chest.
Not freaking funny,
you find? Quantum poetics? Please. What news of footprint
pillars sand you don't follow? Thy neighbor's kingdom come,
will be done.
-W.W.
THE WIND REVEALS
that on Earth's merest surface
all things interdepend
in a tango of bending and standing still,
bending while
standing within the tugging silence
of depths that trust themselves.
What it cannot show is what only a man
can start to tell of an inner bell
that sways to ring in rhyming with the wing's swing
– a sounding that does not need to wave a flag
as proof of membership
of any knot of roots only weakened so.
Do branches
of flowers and fruit point to their roots -
or reach up to their seed
of the Sun? Does the squirrel or robin bow
to its own tail or wing – or, stopped short
by men's fences, kneel to ghosts and bones of trees?
I let the wind in the hand go where it will,
let the hand be a cloud
or an unlabelled feather or flower or
stone of light,
let the themes of my dreams remember
themselves like steam rising
from the Earth's core only to become her rain
whose fingers interlocking set free
all her tongues to bridging Silence's chasms.
(from "Within The Wind" © by Brian Chan)
FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN 