I Will Wait

 

 

I will wait for every last brown leaf to fall.

Words will only come when the tree outside

my window looks like it died in anguish,

by lightning, or by news so sad

that its sap suddenly crystallizes into despairing

amber, leaving the brittle, black branches, (each splay

of Y birthing smaller Y), screeching curses at the

oblivious sky.

 

I will wait until the cottonwood tree that in midsummer

burgeons silver-green with glancing mirrors to the sun,

(as I lie on my bed wrapped in air wide-awake with July),

plays out its melodramatic death in late November when the 

tree being goes wandering while the gnarled husk keeps its 

place in my small yard.

 

On that day of complete nakedness and death,

when the tree’s soul has walked out of sight

and the wind stills, dropping its last leaves on

chastised ground…

 

That is the day when the words will come.

 

I will write them down for you and as you read them to me 

aloud, they will enter through your eyes, the only two living

beings in my world, and make their way to where it is ever 

deep, ebullient May.  When our limbs arched over the roof

of the house and moved together in the spring winds.

 

Abbie Conant

Trossingen , Germany

Feb. 2, 2012 (Ground Hog Day)