a forest of one

won’t you teach the boys

that there is nothing to learn

in your voice of contrition and confusion

after ghosts gave way to host

a celebration to the violence that decapitated them

staring there with eyes dripping hunger onto the floor

where the boys play cops and robbers

saying there can’t be a girl criminal

for her hair would hold ways out of the prison window

that is posing as a tree house

that you helped build in the ditch of summer sleeves

behaved iron cutting into two-by-fours to bandage them into being

where new wood meets old wood

that got luckier in its domestication

but that still winces like the boy

who doesn’t want to be a robber

for there is only so much time to be a cop

and even less seconds offered to feast

from the fruits of the tree

that never discuss won’t

but grow and grow and grow

with questions of how there were supposed to be apples here

instead of rotten cores that shake

the earth every fall

that rot you

the protector

you

the icon

you

the destroyer

left alone to watch from the inside

as the cool air coos

the empty house

into stolen sleep

and the earth natures your art

into the boys who repeat the gnawing

again

until the tree dies from the nails

and so do you

scratching above

*

isn’t there a poem written yet

that will make others say

nothing more needs to be said

for there is no yet yet written