What I Will Say

// Robert Root

Did I find something to write home about,
a few things, perhaps, less tethered to the place of gravity and shadow,
one whose fingers are not woven between the fingers of the dead?

In fifty, maybe a hundred years,
when you ask me again, if where I have gone painted anything that sang aloud in me,
I will say of my travels what I have said to you now,
that all paths have risen in the same manner by which they carve their descent.

The seed scattered takes shape in us, spreading light.
The blossom will bend in two, its crown against the dust.
Is it for me to curse the bridges when they crumble? 
Does their falling remove the glory of the mind and sinew that bore them? 

When I was a boy — and nearer to wholeness,
I dreamt of breaking a bone, that I might know what pain is for a man.
When I became a man, I wanted healing and could find only brokenness among the spoils. 

This fracture which runs so deep, whose beginnings cannot be uncovered,
carries upon its shoulders — the revelation of Eden, the confusion of Babel.
It remains an opaque union,
the low and milky language, spoken one to another,
between the two strands of my DNA.