Bruce Bond

     The Visible
     We are from the same root, you and I.
     The tree as I see it is invisible
     to you.   And it gets more that way.

     When I was small, I built a house
     in the branches of an avocado
     and raised my head above the leaves,
 
     largely hidden from the world,
     let alone the mother who called my name,
     bewildered by my disappearance.
 
     There is a tiny god in this picture,
     somewhere in the distance.   I admire
     the way one thing leads to another,
 
     how to think gives birth to the verb
     to thank.   Or is it the other way.
     Every mother is a child of something.  
 
     Thanks to this, that, and on it goes
     over the green scent of fruit
     where it gathers, beyond the roofs,
 
     the startled wires of the neighborhood.
     Such a wide and ruined web.
     It’s gone now.   The house, the tree,
 
     the mother’s voice.   I am a boy
     to grieve, I know, but some days still
     the horizon circles all my history
 
     like a bell.  Thank you, earth.  
     I am a head afloat the heart-shaped leaves.
     What I own is nothing to you.