on mary oliver's wild geese

there are naked women in the trees. of course, this is just what i see when i look out the window and think of your wild geese. i've been watching them every evening as the sun sets and when i say "there are naked women in the trees" i feel i've come close to your meaning. that is, i've been transported, taken inside and i fell in love with a poem. yes, a poem. and when something shakes me back here, to this life, all i'm left with is this lingering line, "there are naked women in the trees", the only photo i was able to snap during my indescribable journey. and there it is. is it enough to make a poem? is it enough to move others as your poem has moved me? perhaps, no. there must be more. i must dig, i must excavate, i must bring it to the surface.

(what if i told you that i wanted to tattoo your poem on my body? would that be my right or yours? your poem, your right. my body, my right. the artist in me balks, throwing it's delicate little fists about in my brain, "how could you? how could you put an other's words on your body?!" but they are such beautiful words and they are perfection. i see no other way around it. the lines are fine paintings that i want forever, i want to carry with me everywhere. yet, i know the artist is right. wait. even if it means that you're old and wrinkled and the idea of a tattoo is no longer a viable "hotness" addition. at least the words won't stretch and blur then. you've done all your growing and shrinking by that point. wait until your words are perfect, wait until you've reached the place were you want to carry around your own work on your skin, wait for your poem on your body. nail it on your coffin. however this still does not explain the naked women...)

the naked women in the trees are reciting your poem. they are fleshy but unreal. i think they belong to Rembrandt. one twists her long, rich, brown curls in the foreground. the glassy waves of her hair translate to the tree, a eucalyptus, as dark as her locks, yet elegantly pale as her freshly churned skin. her face is sad but this makes her beautiful. and she says, "tell me about despair, yours, and i will tell you mine". but what's the use? this whole scene is a pantomime, a grand spectacle that fains true depth, but is, in reality, a series of cut-outs and obsessions. when i close my eyes, this is what i see. nothing but an overactive imagination and a mis-firing of reality. i love it still. this image. i let my head push up against the tree and inhale her scent. she will listen because she is kind, because she is good, because in your poem you've awaken her within me. we don't exchange words, but i lean against that tree a long time, long enough for this cursor to stop beating and long enough for me to let it all go, every, last, sharp, bruising, breath taking despair. and i let the "soft animal of [my] body, love what it loves".

they are like acrobats, the way they sway so easy in the trees, like wisps of grace, their bodies cradled by golden ribbons. it is difficult to distinguish them from the limbs of the trees they move so much as one. all these beautiful women in trees, the "world [offering] itself to [my] imagination", that is poetry, that is moving.