Katy Lederer
The Love Tree
I do not plead for him.
The sun, the face on his head is a present or end.
I have acted unfairly, and practically everything thought has been altered in kind.
This very day, he comes home. This very day, in his eyes I see weather.
Look at his face: you see nothing.
On his face is a white band. His eyes are bright and banging.
In his eyes I see nightfall,
I see his crudest wishes on an alpine plain.
Colder than the crystal man,
The tree in the foreground does glisten.
It is standing in wait. It is wanting what it cannot have. If I touch its limb, withering in the cold
by the forest, it will creep and move as a man.
It will lumber, pathetically, forward to calm me.
’Least I will braid it in sevens and rake its back. Blue silk as camouflage--
That it is a tree--
The bark on its outerskirt glistens with dew.
The inside part: delicate, pure.
I do not plead for him.
The sun, the face on his head is a present or end.
I have acted unfairly, and practically everything thought has been altered in kind.
This very day, he comes home. This very day, in his eyes I see weather.
Look at his face: you see nothing.
On his face is a white band. His eyes are bright and banging.
In his eyes I see nightfall,
I see his crudest wishes on an alpine plain.
Colder than the crystal man,
The tree in the foreground does glisten.
It is standing in wait. It is wanting what it cannot have. If I touch its limb, withering in the cold
by the forest, it will creep and move as a man.
It will lumber, pathetically, forward to calm me.
’Least I will braid it in sevens and rake its back. Blue silk as camouflage--
That it is a tree--
The bark on its outerskirt glistens with dew.
The inside part: delicate, pure.
Song
The criminal procedure of the task.
As if a mountain were slanted outright into air.
Haughty, dark and dangerous in that its elegance at once deformed
Our sight--
In esteem, we bring the beeches down,
We wander through a secret endearment.
We speak in a language more symbolic than meandering.
Concision darts from tree to tree.
If we dare to talk about this love of mine--
The word is sacristy.
The criminal procedure of the task.
As if a mountain were slanted outright into air.
Haughty, dark and dangerous in that its elegance at once deformed
Our sight--
In esteem, we bring the beeches down,
We wander through a secret endearment.
We speak in a language more symbolic than meandering.
Concision darts from tree to tree.
If we dare to talk about this love of mine--
The word is sacristy.
A Letter
The stain of heterodoxy abolishing this bliss.
The contour of the worry is control, in that, around it, penned,
Is a dammed-up circumference. If there were such a thought--
No irony in sorrow or in secrecy--
Inside of it, there was the threat of words.
The receipt of a loving epistle as passionate as we could arrive at agonistically--
I asked myself if I could confront you unannounced.
I asked myself if I could ever endure the separation.
Write these few lines.
I will let you know.
Written from merriment or
Snow--
The stain of heterodoxy abolishing this bliss.
The contour of the worry is control, in that, around it, penned,
Is a dammed-up circumference. If there were such a thought--
No irony in sorrow or in secrecy--
Inside of it, there was the threat of words.
The receipt of a loving epistle as passionate as we could arrive at agonistically--
I asked myself if I could confront you unannounced.
I asked myself if I could ever endure the separation.
Write these few lines.
I will let you know.
Written from merriment or
Snow--
Katy Lederer is the author of the poetry collections, Winter Sex and The Heaven-Sent Leaf, as well as of the memoir, Poker Face: A Girlhood Among Gamblers.
