John

At the end let me arboresce,
Let the hour take me and leave me
Suddenly in leaf.

Minutes fall from meaning,
I lead my world to quartz.

Have you ever met John?
His features fine as twinkling twigs
Flicking drips to the pond.
Days sleep on him like a moss.
Lichens line his face like time,
He hides his lines behind his limbs
And, divided, dies for you to mind them.

His hissing sits the breeze
With the sound the oarsmen sweep
With ferns against his skin
Beating back and forth with ease.

Bark dripping sap
Traps midges in ships bound
For aevum. Is this insect in amber
Afraid of fraying the fabric we’ve woven?
They who brave his glade
Fane find the hand of Baucis in his branches,
Take her heirloom safety from the rain.

They take his matter too,
For boats of oak and lime and pine and yew.
He melts where he is left
And goes into life again.
His lives accrete like leaves
Mulching brown around his feet.
Every death begets a being
And time is a blind street.

Every turn he takes
Transforms,
Transmits to haunt him more.
Paid or waylaid, laid bare or reforged,
Born changed,
O, fickle form.

He has not yet left these shores,
Bounded by braes and brows of barrows.
Brass echoes in narrow halls
Warped with rumbling air,
Tumbling time,
Thumb pleasantly towards…

A circle is a spiral,
Is a living thing,
Spinning light miles.

Cherish John!!

To arboresce is to turn into a tree – I’ve been obsessed with this (Conifer John) since I read Ovid’s Metamorphoses where I got the story of Philemon and Baucis who are granted eternal companionship in treehood as reward for their hospitality towards Jupiter and Mercury. It’s the happiest ending you could hope for in mythology; the rest of the village gets wiped out by The Flood for not admitting strangers to their houses before you think of the gods as toooooo magnanimous.

So this is more on reincarnation, metempsychosis, time, cycles of life and death, whatever. John is the single thread that weaves through all his forms, something that remains when his molecules are repurposed and distributed through all of us. Some people say time is cyclical, I think it’s more of a spiral. Things repeat but nothing is ever the same.

We ask to be priests and watch over your temples,
and since we have spent harmonious years,
let the same hour take us two, nor may I ever see
my wife’s tomb, neither may I be buried by her.’
Fulfillment follows prayer: they were the guardians of the temple,
as long as life was given; weakened by years and old-age
when by chance they were standing before the sacred steps and
discussing the place’s downfall, Baucis saw that Philemon was in leaf,
old Philemon saw that Baucis was in leaf.
And now while the top grew over twin countenances 
while it is permitted, they returned mutual words and said ‘farewell,
o companion’ at once, likewise bark covered concealed mouths

– Ovid, Metamorphoses 8.707–8.719