April 12, 2016

never a perfect tree

The mind's faultless eye is so good at dreaming. How it etches,
from a filmy horizon, a clear notch of real estate, far from
the careless leavings of strangers, or bad weather, or the turmoils
that pitch us into the rugged, labyrinthine present. In the bony clutch
of the familiar and the flawed, we find ourselves pointing our longings to
the highest, smoothest branches, where the fruit has reached its pinnacle of ripeness,
an equipoise of tart and sweet that no fluorescent supermarket aisle could ever reproduce.
And yet, our bodies can't quite make the climb, rooted as they are to the mulch
they're standing in. Or else we know our vision is less faithful than it used to be,
and horizons play their own cruel tricks, and there never was a perfect tree.