Sculpture

when his favorite tree

died ~ remorse and

regret kept him awake

each night for hours

he tried to remember

a particular day it

had flowered or even

the taste of a specific plum

in the abstract darkness he

cut it down to make

something of it or just to

plant another in its place

it was a secret no one

must know, how the sap

somehow ran dry or

gathered in a great gall

how you could count

the leaves and it was

full summer ~ all that empty

space spread out in time

he thought ~ in his darkness ~

of words like knit and heal

it was a journey to a far

land, a city underground

passion sprang out of him

where the limestone cracked

and he ran outside to rub

the old bark all over

climbed into its bosom

tickling each twig ever

so slowly ~ even reaching

briefly to the roots of never

it was fruitless this daily

foreplay in the yard ~ and

embarrassing for the neighbors

to watch ~ a grown man

like a great hound-dog

grinding on the plum, and

finally a joke when he

sat for hours in the knell of

the first four branches

spread outward ~ sometimes

he worried he had been the

the cause of his own woe ~

at last in the hottest

day of midsummer he

began to feel the green

return ~ saw that purple

blush, falling to the ground ~

and in a sweet gesture

he sucked the heavenly dew

out of a careless past

nothing can stop him now

from rubbing day after day

to keep the world ripe

steve phelan