Wooden woman waiting outside of a grocery store
in North Berkeley

Made tired by time,
chips of wood had fallen in masses from her body,
entire aspects of her anatomy had eroded away--
most of her nose, her left ear,
her right cheek, her *******, half her stomach

She had been a tree,
torn apart, reassembled
in the form of a female human being,
no sign of life in her sightless gaze

I guess she’s gone now,
after all those years

I went to look for her
and found only an antique shop
with a peculiar name
at the address where she should have been

I would have liked to have seen her
one last time, this statue
that fascinated and frightened me as a child

I’m glad she’s gone, though--
She resemble less and less a woman,
was becoming clearly merely wood
cut into tiny pieces and glued together

She resembled less and less a woman,
and I’m glad she was killed
before she ceased to be art