a tree like me

i return to this root like a cloud
dreaming it was the sea,
my blood is an echo of my birth,
some tuesday that long ago unwound
until every moment i felt trapped,
sensing the need to return, yet
compelled to continue exploring
the road map left by yellow leaves
declaring their moist purpose.

i am chained to myself as if
i were a trunk, expanding upward
as silent roots are driven to dive
ever deeper into darkness, until
the bones and damp flesh of earth are forced
to reckon with this dual existence.
year after year different aspects of myself
branch out seeking various fires,
every branch shadowed by a hidden root,
each tangent touches a void unseen
yet filled with eruptive potential;
every year these myriad shoots find their limits
and remain suspended, inviting sunlit birds,
chiming bells and singing the wind's song, departing
when winter comes with cold shears,
making less of me, increasing what is beneath.

my being is strewn about shallow roots,
layers of loss, love and tears, blood and victory,
ego and pride, hope and despair, rose and thorn,
all of me, yet none of me, heaps of shadow and light
negotiating a peace, piecing together my forest,
animating my desire to uproot myself,
to exchange these branches for feathers,
these roots for wings, to vacate this shadow plane,
to tear a gaping hole in the earth,
to discover my worm, my fungus, to find what feeds me,
what eats me, what binds me, rooted with soil and blood,
so i may partition this truncated body,
dividing my flesh, feeding a sacrificial fire.