All of life is incomprehensible.

 

One bewilderment atop another

Again and again,

A gaping mouth stretches asunder

The birthrights of men: silence and pain.

 

The reach for warmth

Is hotter,

in battlefields’ blood,

than caresses’ hearth,

 

And the slyness of tongues

Has commerce unearth,

Unto the soil, red in drear

Of our fates, unclear,

If stripping our necks

Of the best of fear

Gave us repose,

As we fall,

Right here:

 

Where rarer is tender comfort,

Than war ended by a child

And commoner the distant cold,

Than predation in the wild

 

So steal me a sail,

From the ship of a gleeful captain,

That bold and in disarray,

I may head to the World Mountain:

 

Where tender untruths

Hold me silent and free,

Of the chains waking eyes 

Keep wrapped to a tree

Whose branches unfurl

Whose leaves ensnare

And meet me where

I indeed declare:

 

“Life heeds no care.”

_________________

 

R.V. Smith: “The Tree”, 07-19-24

 

© 2024 by Ryan Vincent Smith