After Tree of Life

Tribal in the left ear, Schubert in the right,
The muir-tide rises as summer draws nigh.
All heads bow to one heart,
Voices carry from a far off room:

"I've always..."
she does not whisper,
and,

"I thought..."
he does not say,

but instead,

she responds to a deep hunger,
the fire in her blood,
a kind of language churning eternally within her limbs,
sung with her body.


Knowest thou, then, how to hear?

Oh, Oh. They've done it again.
They've done it again and the night has passed
and the grass is wet with renewal,
And the morning comes
and the wind has crushed the peony.
Her parting gift-
a sort of gratitude for the pressing
falling tearing of her petals:
she leaves behind a locket of her scent,
which, some day in the dust of sunlight,
heavy summer heat pressing against his body,
where some whiff of peony will rise up in some forgotten corner,
he will pause, just for a moment,
he will wonder,
before he returns to the shuddering, clanging, dying fall
of day by day.

by Erin Elizabeth Muir