Gods

Almost nothing can outgrow them.
I stand against this trunk, and stumble looking up, 
then through the tilted-back, tipped horizon 

its crown shows blue. Out there on that green
needle-clustered end of one redwood,
my little life. My boyhood, a knot 

of sun-charged shimmer in held rain,
now a snow globe, now an animation
shaken in the palm of a rooted god.

There’s Lawton, Oklahoma, a barber’s pole 
no longer turns drunkenly into itself, 
its vinyl stripes peel silent. And in one storefront, 

Dalton, who pulled me once from drowning
in the frothed hotel jacuzzi, now creaks 
down a hardware store’s aisle toward me 

where I stand, holding the Lufkin cap in 1986
until he lifts it, pays and fits its meshed forest 
dome snug and snapped on mine. I hear 

the ache of hardwood. Windblown droplets 
blur my eye. We are walking past the plastic
flashlights, pocket knives, wooden rulers, glass 

jars of golden-foiled caramels. A rope of bells
jangles. Still dust hangs in a wedge of window light. 
Outside we hop into the Scottsdale, disappear

into the cloud behind us. Steam across 
his mirror from the shower, heat off the faucet 
handles as he tries to catch his body on the chrome, 

his heart two cactus wrens flapping 
in a dry cage. The tub—warm bowl—holds him 
in a wet light. My early cedar chest:

purled pyjamas, a torn baseball, 
that camo cap. So this tree digs into me. 
So the melt from what-has-been 

into this sky. Dark trunk. Soft splinters as I rise.
There are people who believe they still believe
nothing is not there and it will save them. 

Darkness wraps around my shoes. Sometimes 
there are eyes in the woods I do not see. 
Sometimes an orange bird. One who sat stunned 

on tarmac in the shade below my car, but when 
I crossed the parking lot, and when I lifted it, 
rested in my palms, strummed by what chord 

I could not hear, until I walked over to some maples, 
and it flew into those branches, unrustling
its little heart, as though nothing ever happened.