If I was to cry golden tears,
upon the molten sentiments of my memories
I would find that I was alone on a sodden ply wood park bench.
Drifting through the avenue of some crisp city's name I couldn't remember.
Where squirrels had golden teeth and crows were caped in faux fox pelts.
It was in the single sweet tree, that stood above the koi fountain,
which was coated in brooding duckweed-
where I laid my head to rest in a forgiving nest.
Of last year’s forgotten newspaper clippings,
small elve’s common yarn knittings,
and the brambles of unpicked raspberry bushes.
That was where I settled my head to think.
The tree was none of either world-
It was beautiful. It was cold.
It was something else.
Its leaves strung together as musical spider silk
containing me in the safe hollow of the bird’s nest
and there I asked:
where would I one day raise my wings of paper-mâché and clay
to rise above the flooding storm beneath my stationary talons?
I do not recognize this overcrowded town.
Nor the cracked cobblestone street.
Or the masses of faces that go and buy nondescript bread each evening.
I wish I recognized these apathetic faces;
-that would feed the crying pigeons,
-make fresh strawberry jam,
and parachute from the fifth floor windows to the first floor.
I wish I could rise in a stuffy hot air balloon, above it all.
To see down the shining chimney stacks of burned hopes,
past the aging gospel choirs
that pray to some sentience I do not feel for myself.
I wish the warm fireflies would stay near to me-
light my hidden world in a swift, dim light that reminds me of a birthday candle's glow.
Where the smoky air itself is my sky,
and each breath I take goes to the lonely moon.
This world is not permanent.
The sun will not shine forever on the lasting glow of young honey hair,
while the moon and its face lessens its white frosted skin
and shields the beauty. Lost upon our eyes
forever.
I'll have to lift myself from the silken home of amiable gossamer
or else I have slept in ignorant hibernation.
And not learnt for myself that flying
above these molten tears is not as painful as I had once condemned myself.
But instead- it's about having the courage to accept that not
everything
is a philosophical daydream as I experience it.
Instead we have normal baked tar roads
and sultry willow trees with common misunderstood spider webs and abandoned, adored robin nests.
With picky strangers who buy whole wheat bread,
sell strawberry jam at the monthly farmers’ market,
and little, ambivalent kids;
who lept from the tops of their winged bunkbeds to the floor.
Pretending to fly stuffy hot air balloons.
Crossing over brick chimney stacks and trusting choirs
that proclaim to the world of what they believe.
And not as they see.
The solemn tree continues to grow
with me inside of its only heart.
Each ring growing around and around me;
as each layer of warming history
is combated to me as light sounds and meaningless memories.
In faces that I will never see again,
and melodies that will never be the same.
The golden, molten tears of my sap drip from my leaves and then my branches
back
to the nursing mulch below
because I know where I've grown from;
this earth.
Next to this path.
Next to this city;
where I never knew the name of.
But I know it means something to me.
If no one else can realize it at least-
I know.
At least-
I know.
