Post and Beam

[bruorton]

That tree was part of me, or I was part of it.

I'm not quite sure. Four feet thick at the base,

with grooves in its bark I could wedge my hand into,

it was a mainstay of my early years. Its climbs, 

its views, as intimately known as family. The games 

I played, dancing in and out of its dappling shade

with a certainty that never countenanced

the storm-wracked day it fell upon our home, 

shattering the ridgepole, chimney, windows.

 

Were it not for the house's rugged post-and-beam

construction I'd have been part of it for good;

the main trunk crashing to rest mere feet above my head.

After the rain, we opened the door to find its canopy

snapped off into the yard at the far end from the jagged 

stump: the lawn, become an upside-down jungle.

The next day, gazing up into the blue cavity

where it had stood, I saw a bird circling, bewildered.

 

It is that bird I think of now, when she says 

she's not feeling much of anything exactly,

the week after her husband of six years moved out.

She's sitting on a stool at her kitchen bar,

turning her water glass in circles, counter-clockwise, 

and achingly it comes to me that nothing I can give 

could fill the breach she's standing under. 

 

But once upon a time,
some anonymous worker 

knocked an oak peg
through a hemlock tenon,
anchoring it in its mortise socket.
A momentary, forgettable gesture,
that allowed me to walk out 

into the sudden jungle of the world.