Maple tree

I am a maple tree

Missing a limb.

A branch – the biggest –

Having grown

akimbo

has tipped the balance and

snapped off under

its own

weight.

Food for gravity’s maw:

my broken offspring,

surrendered

to mudblooded rootraw Earth,

is a gift to all those ancestors

who patiently await further

deconstructions.

Limbless, I keep treading

this roughshod tale:

“say a mantra enough times and it

will sing itself.”

Shot through

somehow,

with something

green and sanguine

– faith? –

Goddamned if I don’t

keep reaching, touch nothing, and reach some more.

Here I stand!

Lopsided, crowned with a bristling canopy of

clean shoots,

so smooth

you can’t imagine

they’ll ever gnarl and crease

though, they will…

As I grow, I will also

furrow grey and elephantine, until in time

– faithless ? –

these once-new limbs, too

will fall.

So what?

For now, I’m juicing the planet

Roots like muscles, squeezing the soil and pumping that

mycellium mojo

heavenward.

Crooked grin,

Bleeding from the ribs,

and heart

wailing like a drum:

THUMP THUMP THUMP

(and that’s why they call me:

mother.)