shake the tree

I take a swallow from the steel cup, forgetting briefly that the coffee has cooled, the cup beset by nervy flies and the ruthless breeze of autumn waking up. I take the rest as time spent if not time served, a punishment befitting the life. Always aggrieved and put upon, the thinking pours it on thick. The cherished voice becomes a relentless quiet, no other to bounce the signal off. The precision instrument wears out gears and uses old software, until there isn’t prose or poem left, just the letters unsent and the fruit of the wrong headed decision tree. I pour another steaming cup, stuck to one that long ago shook me off. What was once no longer suited, the move so flawless you could hardly see it happen. From a long dead branch, I am slowly catching up.

It is in the way language lingers on the tongue, the root so true, the ghosts still warm. It is the oath and the intention, these lonely intersections and closed scenic routes, these long empty hours burned down to hunger once the anger was rendered into flesh. It is an alone I fail to convey across this desert of sounds and symbols, the graveyard of the lexicon, hoping the reader has an ear for bones. The absence so fervent and demanding, a tantrum of feelings banging around the box, all four chambers chomping at the bit. The absence so natural and right it lands like a body shot. No longer want to is a hard reason but plenty reason enough.

The words, these words, won’t let it lie. They take the hammer, they take the pick, sometimes they even push the broom. The dead leaves shake, ripples in the wind, the atmosphere changing shifts. I drink coffee hot enough to steam my glasses, hot enough to place a mortal kiss upon my lips, swallowing embers and sparks. The world moves quickly, but I move slow, dragging out the slippery glimmers and the ravages to the traveler. The season to the last leaf, the earth to the root and stones, the held breath and blinding star. I love you for who you are, missing all the checking in. I have been this way for eons, kiss the earth, shake the tree. The words swimming through your blood.