The Sycamore Tree

 

The Sycamore Tree

Not to the sycamore tree
grave of republicans
or the communist party
not to the stones and bricks
or these buildings
or the tangle of ivy
the daffodils or the April
rain that brings them, no white
in the mirror’s face nor black
not to fortune
nor to any state
no flags no familiars
in interstellar spaces
no faceless friend
or beguiling interiors
the moss doesn’t call
the ferns can wait
hot vents of the bathysphere
microbes rushing in ruffles
and folds of volcanic rents
wheels, carcasses, death’s abyss
black holes, Caracas, Geronimo
bliss, TV dinners, Dylan and blues
tenement dives, O’Reilly, the news
incessant war, death drives
and Zero, kamikaze cacophiles
dirt-loving divas, preachers
mullahs, adoptees, cynics and mulberries,
her face shadowed by a visor
home run kings, old ladies
supine on pink fainting couches
in hot dark rooms
my mother’s coffee
peppermint tea
not the fight the peace the cloud
not the music not the river
not the dust not the dander not the mote
no synthesis of syllabus no genesis,
no zoo creatures, flea circuses
animalcules in petri dishes
Brownian movement
Bishop Blaughram’s Tomb
nostalgia houses sewers
grapes and highways amoebas
molecules moons and desires
neither still nor round
and nothing to come