the dim lit rooms where i met your friends, i left
for the dry winter with salty roads
the drive down the east coast
the blizzard on the way back to PA

the spring and summer
when the bottom of my stomach still stung.

hospital stays
and steady paces into the snow
saw the eventual melting and resurgance
of this spring
except when the flowers came up,
they were all gray.

and when the trees all blossomed,
they were all gray.

and when i looked in the mirror,
it was gray too.

and nobody talked to me
and you just laughed and said
*good riddance

i know that
most days
the cathedral of your body
with all its dips and curves
forgotten staircases
and ripped velvet covers
on the splintered pews
is hard to love

and there are days
where you wish that your
body would have manifested itself
as a palace
made of ivory and bone
with great empty halls
that would host nothing else
but your anguished cries
and empty stomach

but these things
are incapable of filling you up
because it is hard to sustain yourself
on bitterness and past scars alone

so i say to you
my friends
brothers and sisters
my lovers
and those living in the wastelands
of themselves

cast aside these
things for you are not a church
or a palace or a temple

no
you are something
much stronger and vast
grow yourself into a forest

turn all the sleepless nights
and breakdowns and hospital visits
and suicide attempts
and those traintracks of scars
into the great twisting trunks of trees

grow yourself as big and bold
as you need to be
protect yourself
wrap up all your sharp and soft
edges and corners
into the bark of mother nature

become a forest
because
through fire and drought and storm
and flood
the forest always comes back
even the charred remains of trees
stand strong

so
i say to you
with your dark circles
and long sleeves
and chest hidden behind a binder
with all your scars
and imperfections
be a forest
because
a forest is unstoppable
it always comes back
it always grows back

and so will you

I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close.
At two o'clock our neighbors drove me home.

In the porch I met my father crying--
He had always taken funerals in his stride--
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.

The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
When I came in, and I was embarrassed
By old men standing up to shake my hand

And tell me they were "sorry for my trouble,"
Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,
Away at school, as my mother held my hand

In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.
At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived
With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.

Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops
And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him
For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,

Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,
He lay in the four foot box as in his cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

A four foot box, a foot for every year.

So aye
We wir watchin
that David Attenborough
or tryin tae -
fower weans tearin up the joint,
an she's like,
See if youse dinny shut it...!
an aw that, ken -
You no gonny tell thum?
So ah'm like,
"Aye.  
Wheesht, youse."

But it wis amazin, like.
These fish.
Years oot at sea.
Tiny wee at first,
dodgin sharks an jellyfish
an aw sorts,
awa oot, miles fae land.
(God!  Youse!  Take it up the stair!
Tell thum, you!
"Aye, boys.  Listen tae yir ma.")

Then wan day, like
they get the urge, ken?
Got tae go.
An in they come,
surgin fae the sea,
these sleek, silver bullets
fat wi feedin.
(I'll no tell yis again!)

Nothin, an ah mean nothing
is gonny stop them.
Waterfalls?  Nae bother.
Just pure hungry
fir the lassies, ken?
The boy Attenborough sais
they dinny even eat!
(That's it!  Ah tellt ye!
Here you!  Take some responsibility,
wull ye?
"Eh?  Oh, aye.
Away tae yir rooms, boys -
yir ma tellt ye.")

These pure ***** divils
will loup up sheer cliffs,
baws burstin, bi the look ay it.
Poetry in motion, ken?
Like, ah dinny ken, pure water
brought tae life, an that.
Jist pure savage.

An then, haw -
they find the lassies!
An it's jist, like,
'splurge'!
Done the deed.
Gemme ower,
job done,
deid.

An there's this shot.
Ripplin shallows,
just fill ay the twitchin bodies.
Craws an bears an that,
queuin up fir the bonanza.
Jist, like,
totally
spent.

An she's aw,
Here, is that no terrible?
Pair buggers!
Eifter aw that!
An ah'm like,
"Aye."

But see inside,
ah'm thinkin,
"Lucky,
lucky *******."