THEY NEVER SEEM TO MIND

I hang heavy on the trees, now

but they never seem to mind

I’m dead weight some days

Like ice

But they keep living.

Hard to believe in the fruit of nuts

from this far into frozen

but they wait fat and patient in my palm

Hard to imagine a flower

Wide open to the cold

Until you pass through a tangle

thick with witches

And they show you tough in tenderness

Like your body’s never known

I mean, I dry and roast their children

before I grind them between stones

I boil the babes till the tea turns brown

and slurp it down with syrup

warm inside my hide

tanned with their summer skins

I squeeze the blood from balsam

to melt in the fat of friends

I bathe in all their bodies

Hoping selflessness soaks in.