bark memory

June 1985

behind you

there’s a tree

what is it

cedar?

behind you

stands a tree

it’s brown

like you.

and maybe

here

your spine

is not yet crooked

not yet weighed down

by backpacks full

of printed afterlives

so stand here

in the dignity

of tall

in the sureness of brown

the shade

trust me

there will be years

enough

to twist and curve

stand here

where you already

know your roots

stand here

where you already

feel your reach

stand here

and just remember

who you are

i’m right behind you

And….my inner-child homeschooling continues. Summer session. I am working with a series of portraits my mother Pauline McKenzie made of me in relationship to the natural world. The purpose of this time travel is reclamation and collaboration with what my mother saw. What is the poetic form here? Maybe lullaby as time travel technology. What I may have known, what I need to know now. I am traveling back before particular learnings. This particular poem is in honor of my spine. How was my spine related to this tree? What are the forms of support I forgot I had. What is the persistent love still there behind me? And this is for you. Your dignity. Deep underground and reaching sky.