Bois d’arc Breathings

 

Between my eyes and that bois d’arc tree

just across the way,

in the seven seconds it took to remember the

spelling of bois d’arc,

the history of humankind has blown by.

There! The indestructible atomic remnants

of Caesar’s gasp as

Brutus’s knife entered his ribcage,

and of the basso profundo sung

in Gregorian Chant at Chartres.

Oxygen ventilated at the Battle of Hastings,

passed on through photosynthetic generations

of pine trees, plankton, and petunias,

then inhaled again by Shakespeare, Chopin,

and the guy who played Chewbacca.

And even the breath of Jesus, let loose

in the world with the words,

“It is finished;”

only, it was just beginning.

A dog carried that expelled expiration

back to Jerusalem, passed it on to

a fig tree, which gave it to pigeon,

who deposited it on the street

where it was stepped on by a donkey

and delivered to a field outside of the city

from where it was delivered eventually,

after being present in a hundred thousand

manifestations

to this pasture in Texas..

where part of it was grabbed by the bois d’arc

and part of it by me.

And that, of course, is a bit of the reason

we are both still alive.

(to be continued)