Despair

Despair

A friend and I

talked back then about a tree

whose branches were the choices that we

had not taken

then she chose not to be

                                        W. S. Merwin

                                        Choosing
for M. W.

The time you finally arrive and think:

after all these miles--miles and miles and miles

I will never laugh again or grin

or have the urge or the need to.

Broached and cold after the broaching

the slow flow unbunged when will it be  

enough to sit with your face in your hands

and soothe each cheek and bone, each eye

lid and socket each and every hair and lash

each line beside each line and every line  

a sheet of music and a meistro all in one ear

in the dark that you are now and feel

stumped under the palms of your thumbs
and fingers finding the jaw's a wadded
ball say and then to lift it with practice lift it

tooth and nail and set with lips drawn in

lift it inch by inch until it can be unhinged

again open-tongued and smoothed a laid out

path on your now ancient back that's a map
on whose skin you've born the way

and taken to the trees or the sea and the dark is all we have

in common.  This paper's been through the mill,

this paper, once of a ream, once all goo and glue,

once one of a tree among trees.  It does

not cannot recall the one true palm upon it

who meant no harm.  But there was one--

and long like a mother’s hand

on her son’s intubated lung

after the cutting in and cutting out

the arrival and exit of air between

gurgling all this life unwadded and set

flat again and sealed and bared and hovered

and a drop of ink to set the first note

in 4/3 time

or 4/4

or whatever we can unskilled make
make at the moment to be heard or more, felt

under the face under the hands, under the lips

unfurling in time once it’s all sung
in notes and drawn on the stave

and gripped and hanged

on four strings

against the cheek and called out

by wrist and bow 

and played