Tree Life (Poetry)

I dreamed that I could live forever-safe in the intense green forest
ramble of your mind — live as bird might live — content
in a kindness of warm branches where
your thoughts would weave for me a tender nest
lined lovingly from memory —
rustling leaves and plump-fleshed mosses chosen from a hoard
of such small offerings — their comfort
imagined — layered soft with smiles and sun.

I hold on to that vision — a bright laze of days
spent drifting treetop-high — swaying with each sigh
as you recall our summers —
every season through the past’s blue eye
breath sweet and rocking gentle
and watching ancient sunsets lose their glow
as love did — long ago — leaving sky
its lilac ache edged round with ghosts
and nostalgia’s cool-scented dusk — spirits crooning wistful —
almost to themselves.

How our young voices linger — frame those immortal words
the woods since claimed for echoes
while I brood for you a fragile perfect shell
that failed to hatch — its promise left stillborn
although I hear sometimes a fragment —
a faint repeated song —
notes borrowed from old themes
consoling all those airy might-have-beens
that haunt me — tend to whisper more and more
now the yellow years are tinged
with shades of brown.