Читать книгу The Tatters - Brenda Coultas - Страница 9

MY TREE

I found a pearl and wore it in my ear

Deep ocean echoes sing like a seashell

A girl promised a purse filled with jewels, if I would be her friend

Purses open secrets as priceless as pills in a jeweled box

Loose pearls, enough to imagine what a great loss that necklace was or was not

I like to see metal turn red and glow and to hear its hiss when it meets the water. Leather bellows, suspended from the ceiling, pump air into the fire. Long-handled tongs and picks forge mostly nails. I open all the old purses. There might be change left in one.

I built you a tree of light to see by

To listen to digital libraries in your palm.

Renamed myself writing this book, renamed myself after building this tree

I burnt candles all night to grow these leaves.

I fed books to the flame, to make a blaze to read by

Mined libraries to power this tower of light

Built sparkling branches

with flaming pages for leaves

dense as the weeping willow’s cascade of curls

On the mountain ridge my tree stands head and shoulders above the hardwoods. Along the roadway wooden poles, bathed in chemicals, hold up a network of wire

I built a tree, more cell than sweeping pine or black walnut, as natural as pink pine needles or a silver holiday tree. Glittery pine boughs glue-gunned on

No needles on the floor

No forest smell

My gift is glittery and eternal

even in synthetic shreds

dumped on a landlocked city sidewalk

it finds its way to the sea