Redwood

Redwood

There are only ten thousand things

I want to share with you,

But that is all I can think of at the moment

I will think of more

Tomorrow and follow down

The path of your laugh

And trickle down the apex of your smile

Find an unknown in the boughs

Of these tree trunks forested inside me

To climb up and confound me

How to describe every leaf to you

If I will have the time and patience

To not burn this forest to the ground

Confused and at the sound

Of not knowing if the reciprocal exists

Above a denominator of zero or a two

To divide this up and follow through

With all these sentences on the fences

Of the line between the forest and the city

All these moving pieces

I can not sleep with this distance in the sheets

Waking up for answers knowing I can not speak

To you dreaming and awaking away

In a hammock strung up in the trees

Swaying in the branches waiting to fall 

Expectations not to expect it all 

To work out, always an opposite

Directions for affections and all these names

That fail to mention

Me as a man worthy of remembering

As a seed grown into someone integral

A man with a comma before the decimal

In the number of things I got to convey

Before this breeze just blew me away

Down from these branches into the grip

Of more busted chances

Down here in the rocks, gravel and blocks

Of cold concrete to eat with a spoon and smile

That one day my bones will mend, feet back in the spikes

And my body will hike up the trunk to the top of the redwood

Forgiving, but not forgetting the life I have led