New Year's Eve & Post-dendranthropology
by Andrea Holland
[ poetry - january 07 ]
New Year's Eve
- for j
It's no small thing
to negate the stars, the very stars
which guide us. Where you are you forget
to breathe now and then. Look up.
Some reckless constellation is still holding on,
I've got you.
There's a place where conversations go
when we are sleeping. Come back
from your head to me. Up ahead
a child is dreaming of balloons
blue as a robin's egg. He was a tiny star
in your blackness, now he is a robin's egg.
Don't let go,
Don't ever let go.
The moon is the same moon.
This tide is the same tide.
This is why we continue, why we believe.
The baby on your lap is sleeping, little bird,
eyes black as stars, all yours. Here we are
then, where we talk and the lick of moon
rises.
Post-dendranthropology
Study based on the theory that man had sprung from trees
- Supplemental English Glossary, 1881
Let us imagine acorns falling, God's tears, as we walk out
of Eden, turn our backs on the trees and their verdant promises.
We chose each other, the shine of skin over gnarls of bark,
we choose the weight, the sweat, warm breath at the neck
of the moment the limbs end and the sun is right there.
Fingers gripped, the climb back down. The lost chestnut,
stray acorns,
the sycamore's spinning, the sheer luck of it is not for us:
the tree lets go over and over, and the seed sits, the nut roots or rots,
it's all so random. The tree stands alone, in solitary reproduction,
without conjunction, while we busy ourselves with the promises we make
as our hearts fall from above.
