Torso Miletus, marble sculpture circa 480 B.C. Photograph by Marie-Lan Nguyen (France). 2006.
Archaic Torso of Apollo
He’s got no nipples. He’s the perfect man minus that leg and the arms and head (and the man-bits snapped clean off)—but what’s he been missing for millennia? When that young Greek sat down one morning and said, “Today I’m going to make the perfect man,” he decided: “My love will have no nipples.”
My perfect man’s got nipples, & a handlebar mustache, & a great big overcoat he drapes across my shoulders as we wait for the next train downtown, & two eyes cut from clouds, & two soft lips pulsing warm on my cheek.
In a hundred years, the nipple-less body of our great god of Art will gleam hard under pale museum light. My love will have no lips. But he will exist as the smoothness of this page, the blackness of this ink, the warmth you still feel from his great big overcoat.
On Trees:
I.
If trees grew upside down
you'd need a shovel to climb them.
Children would not be allowed to climb trees.
Their parents would say, “You’re too young. Leave
tree climbing to the experts.
You can try again when you’re older.”
They’d dig in their backyards near a tangle of roots hoping
to find a tree
and plod back inside,
shovels dragging behind them,
upon unearthing a bush.
The redwoods of California would
need teams of expert engineers
to drill through the earth and the rock
winding down for days through tunnels
with only spelunking lights to guide them
before they’d reach the leafy tops
perfectly preserved in bedrock
glowing green
the only color for miles.
It would be a holy experience to see
something no human should.
They’d thank their own wit and ambition
and take a leaf for themselves to press between
some wax paper
and frame for their living rooms
so they could brag with a wave to whoever
came along:
I was there. I climbed a tree.
II.
I love this space on the water: the space between the hanging branch of a young willow and the surface of the pond. The branch sprouts low and arcs, twisted and rambling, before wood gives way to fresh summer leaves, tips dipping low to caress the surface.
I’ve been here before, watching the ducks with Lucy, asking her to name the flowers. Sometimes she knows; sometimes she doesn’t. Her mother has a garden, so she’s picked up some things, but not everything.
My mother has a thirty-year-old pothos and an affinity for violets, but most flowers make her sneeze. The plants growing in her yard arrived through other means—a previous owner (we’ve moved many times), or the natural flowering and seeding of things. I don’t think my mother has purposely put a plant in the ground in her life. She prefers to see what springs up on its own—uncared for, but beautiful.
Today I walked by myself around the university lawn to stretch my legs in the wet warmth of early summer. I saw a slender woman in a black sundress, hair cropped above her ears, cheekbones sharp, shoulders sharper, much the way I look when I’m thin. Probably the way I look right now. I thought, “How beautiful.”
I saw her stop on the path and look to her right, smiling. When she left, I followed her gaze and found a gray-haired woman kneeling on the concrete edge of the pond. I followed the tilt of her camera and saw a young family of ducks: a mother and six or so ducklings.
The group was swimming, quacking, bobbing beneath the willow branch in the curve of the shelter, in the space before the leaves brush the water.
As I watched, the ducks swam to another part of the pond. The photographer left. The slender woman in the black sundress left. Lucy is not here, nor her mother, nor my mother.
I photographed the shaded area, even though the ducks are gone. I sat where the photographer sat. I am here.
III.
I’ve never climbed a tree.
I wanted to climb one by the Mennonite church
when I was six, like the big kids,
the tall kids, the ones whose hearts
did not keep them small.
I wanted to climb the pine in the field
and I would have—
I told myself I would have—
but the next Sunday some adult had shaved
off every branch I could have reached.
My mother said, “To keep you safe.”
I wanted to climb one when I was ten, and I did try
while Millicent sat in the highest branches
with her cropped hair and cargo pants,
she who taught me what a lesbian was—
a whispered word, a shame—
and I tried to follow her,
but the bark scraped my hands,
and my arms never really were that strong
and I was afraid—of splinters, of falling, of feeling so much air—
so I remained with the roots while the leaves brushed her hair,
her face arched toward the sun.
There is a tree by the window of the apartment I share
with my husband, the man
I met ten days after I turned twenty.
Owned by the city, branches kept pruned
(enough to provide shade without attracting the ambitions
of children and small women).
I rest my head in the divot of his chest,
dogs sleeping at our side,
and he tells me that he
has never climbed a tree.
And I think—if I had asked my mother, that Sunday at church—
She would have lifted me into the tree
And stood below.
I can see her as she was then,
or maybe as I am now, or will be,
her face my face our face melding.
I see her favorite blue-speckled dress.
I see my mother hoisting me with an oof
and hovering below
with the look she always gets when we break the rules:
eyebrows up, a glance over a shoulder, a grin.
And the vision pauses, and that is all I see:
my mother, her eyebrows, her smile.
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