The Carving Tree
December 2018 issue of The Write Launch Literary Magazine
​Poetry

I was not born in these kinds of waters
but I came to believe and to canoe away
on the river of silty glass
bugs skating the surface

sunlight pouring into me
laughter echoing off the empty
voices raised, poles poised, fish fleeing upstream even.
This is before I am other people

when there is nothing to gather
but Stroh’s, sandwiches, weed, and
some fishing poles out of someone’s garage.
I had not yet walked knee deep in

the Kokosing muck in a flimsy pair of Keds
and learned why
anyone would do such a thing.
The sound of Lake Erie shushing around its

boulders or warring with itself had not
cut through me, deep, the voice of desire and struggle.
Silvercreek had not glistened
beneath Cliff House

an open vein of change
bleeding hope and fear
and my gaze from the center of Lake Ontario
had not consumed the burning sun

over the edge of the earth
while raising the moon
high in the dusky dim.
I was not born in these kinds of waters

the warm breeze full of friends lazily gliding
pontificating and fooling
up onto the gravely sand back at the shady bend
snagging Stroh Fish empties from a previous upset.

We tromp with no point or intention except
to shelter under the looming protective branches
of the carving tree someone has placed here for us
hopes and dreams etched straight up its soul

Jayla loves Sam
C.W. hearts L.K 4ever
Zeb was here
Fuck the man.

This is before I am other people
and I long to drift away along the Middle Fork
and sway in the branches
or wade the shallows by myself not saying anything

but recording everything to memory, to places
where such things are held until they are needed.
This is when the magnificent tree
in the bend of the river

where the water churns for years
in pools of doubt
before moving on
calls to me and I wonder then

if broken people ever carve things in trees.
I was not born in these kind of waters
with a tendency to meander without worry
and to whoop with joy with fistfuls of attitude

but I came to believe and to canoe away
to the bend with the tree
carved by people who knew what to say.
Now I am other people

​and these things are needed
so I know what to carve.