The importance of a tree

There is a tree in McBaine that is locally famous. It's about 20 minutes outside of my hometown and one of the oldest Burr Oaks in the region. It is old, so old. I can't tell you how many poems I've written about the Burr Oak tree, or how many memories are tied to it. And soon this will have to find it's way into a poem or 10.

Because I visited it a couple weekends ago and it was dying. I wanted to show this tree that lived in my heart to my new brother in-law. The leaves were browning. They looked stiff and crisp, like they were stuck in Fall, but it was mid-summer. Did she get enough water? Is it just the end of her life? Is it strange to mourn them?

In a way, it almost feels like Pam's death, all over again. This was our poet tree, the poetry. I based my first good poem on this tree, for Pam and Kyle. This Burr Oak embodies the warmth and magic of my 20s, of working with other poets, of my mentor. Now there are cigarette butts around her roots. There are bottle caps. Crushed beer cans. A teenager spray painted a plea for somebody to go to the prom with them across the roots in hideous orange. The leaves are dying. I feel so broken.

Sublime

The way of Aurouran winds

Pushing laden clouds like

Destiny was braided with 

dandelions into your curls

But really it's just a Monday

And you had your coffee

And you've got shit to do

Before a yawn, and the end 

of this short Winter day.

Thoughts on a dead astronomer...

Did her fever-ravaged middle years

Prevent her from a doting husband

And a sticky child

Or did she love like me,

Only quietly, hidden, 

a seed buried In a grape,

Her map hidden by daylight.

I am impressed with her name

And her ability to read the 

Naked face of stars.

What does love have to do with it?

I'm still trying to wrap my head around the fact that we can blog from phones now.

New media new words new sentences.

I'm trying to adapt. 

I really admire how Eileen Myles writes to her blog. She is fearless.

Are blogs the new vanity press? Obviously. And by new, I mean less than 100 years old, not in the last decade.

Raw

What is raw 

to you, my love?

The cicada song

Throbbing in the chill 

Of a fall night

A cell phone

As a conduit for 

happiness and gratification

Raw is a hit of dopamine

And mimed language

As art

It is coming home late

And rolling into the

Curve of your back

Alala

One of the truly bizarre wonders if this new digital age is the ability to write blogs while you poop. Now, I'm no Luddite. I love my technology, but I hope that nobody starts a blog for their bowel movements. I refuse to google to see if it already exists. 

I read an interesting article about "scary places" this morning. Deserving of poems probably. Stay tuned, imaginary readers! I will avail you with random words soon. They might even coherent.

Peace, love, and poetry,

K

A poem about things you can't lose.

I am violently silent

around them,

about it,

in the way

a rock wears flat

beneath the caress 

of time and river.

If poetry is cracking

open ribs to lay bare the hidden

I would kindly request reprieve.

Today there are words 

I'm trying to work around my lips

Without so much cracking

"When we were trying"-

And the box of hand me downs

My mother bought for us.