Leaves

In past years I would walk silent until a twig snapped
beneath my feet (in leather boots to protect ankles
from the fangs of the serpents that crawl
in venomous haste from their normal homes)
and I would stretch my hands like a minor god
and pull a leaf from Yggdrasil and feel its veins
like the tendons that allow a lover’s fingers
to flex from the wrist and then rend away vascular promises.

The forest took portions of my breath as I fell into a sigh
and wild turkeys like a shattered sky scorched the air
with their beating wings and I tore linearly at
that which I had killed until tiny shreds were all that remained.
There was not a burst of cold fury directed at my bitter,
murderous actions, for the earth is a woman and knows
not how to be violent and calm at once, but I felt its hatred
and knew it to be deserved and there were demarcations
placed to preserve this irreparable savagery although
on the ground a million of its cousins had already perished.

Because I am alive I know that the world has at long last
tired and wishes for release, and so I slash at any verdant thing
and the rain whipping in the wind was caressing
the crevasses in the city’s streets and sending dead branches
careening to the bayou’s open arms and I knew that
it soon would take me too. Although I know how to swim
drowning is not so bad if the water with a film of ice
shudders in fear at the temperature of flesh.