Landscapes of the Mind - Poems

A Tree Falls

I can only go by the stories

of your great leap of faith

as told on the six-o-clock news;

young girl, how you flung yourself

headfirst into the waiting mouth,

swallowed whole --- abyss

without color or stars,

black hole we know not of

until we are confronted by it.

I imagine everything happened

much too quick, like snapping

a little bird's helpless neck,

no time to grasp finality.

Though surely you thought beforehand

what it would feel like, to stand

thirty feet up, toes curling

dangerously over the edge,

a forceful wind at your back

flapping the ends of your dress like wings;

nothing to clutch

for stability, comfort.

So you toppled,

skinny tree in the fierce

blind eye of a storm;

it shook the sap out of your wounds.

Young girl, what made you do it?

Dark heart, your enigma of pain.

Was it words? A boy?

Their hands not at your back,

but 'round your throat.

What broke you so far

to possess you to step off

into the cold realm of unknowns?

I know how words can maim, even kill.

In cold science, the heart

is just an ugly, fist-sized

lump of tissue,

a network of arteries ---

the red, agonized muscle

pumping blood throughout,

sustaining the body. A clock

tick - tick - ticking mortality. But

what would the warm,

human part have to say?

When yours broke,

did you take notice?

When your soul

divorced your body,

did it make a sound?