I came to your door a broken gadget
full of emotion and found you unfolding
 
gentle collaborations of pine sap, metal
scent of light-flare through bristles.
 
I wanted to consume you like
a nutrient. Scrub jays squawked open
 
a psychedelia of green: gold-coin-green,
velvet-vole-green, underlit lime-green,
 
maroon-bruise-fall-green, hurt-protective-
green, green-green. O forest, I’ll never have
 
enough words to contain you. I want to
mint your currency. In this snag of limbs
 
I smell the rot of my own inadequacy.
As usual courage does me no good.
 
Month after month I hardly left my bed
to hold my mother’s voice from the edge
 
of dreams. She lies in a forest full
of broken sticks. Blocks of light fall
 
from the trees and break across ground
like a river, showing me where to go.
 
Deadwood has a ghostly certainty,
not-finality. New wood piled on old.
 
Stiff light through my imprecise fingers
twining round and round and round
 
the 10,000 things that can’t be worked on.

Marietta Brill

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