Tree of Life

Tree of Life
For Pittsburgh

I don’t know why the feeling of sufficiency is so hard to hang on to,
or perhaps I mean contentment, either way
the clematis vines drying on the fence at the close of another year make no bones,
the broad maple denuded by the season’s putsch is quietly resigned
to the winter wind,
but I should note that the wind is warm and under the rag-brown shadows
and the yielding yellow leaves the grass is greening,
and the seagulls, for all their common shit-fragging and screech-speech,
still glide over the bay like treble notes from angel’s throats,
making it possible to envision some kind of purpose
beyond the shifting borders of modernity,
beyond the death-dealing tribes of certainty,
making it possible to turn my mind off
and away from the hatred some humans have for others,
such hatred as to consume every image of light.

Last night in a dream or not a dream, I can’t be sure,
I saw the sun coming up over a valley,
and from across a river I heard eleven sons and daughters of Zion sing;
they sang a Psalm: the one about moths, rust, floods, fire, hate,
unable to consume their love.

10 Comments

  1. Still glide over bays like treble notes from angels throats is an amazing phrase

    Amazing poet! Thanks for existing

  2. Apparently the shooter was wounded and was taken to a hospital to be treated. The first three people who attended to him were Jewish.

  3. What an apt visual simile! –a sea gull’s glide to describe the sound and solace of
    angel voices, often accompanied with “Fear Not”. “Peace on earth” is still on offer
    despite the ‘shifting borders’ and ‘death-dealing tribes’.

  4. The complete “sea gull” and “a dream” are an inspiring version of beauty from ashes, Isaiah 61:3.

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