after “Bare” by Danez Smith and after Manahil Bandukwala
If love is a forest, leave it alone—
let the wind, let time, live in it
for the thousands of years, the tiny
organisms.
If love is fire, and fire breaks out, let love also be water
and smoke and the wolf running, and
even the wolf’s hope.
Did you read of the bear its paws
burnt, and of the den logged?
and did you read the child’s story of the bear who
cannot sleep and sweeps, swims deep, climbs
a mountain steep?
If love is loss, then all is lost:
the forest, the wolf and the bear and
the child in his bed who dreams
of running but is held fast.
The body is love in its rod-and-bone-weight
and gravity, gravity is all, and
it is grave, and it holds,
it holds even the torn and folded
which is the child’s paper plane
flung with such force through ash and
cloud and sky, tumbling to what remains
when the forest is gone.
—
Yvonne Blomer’s sixth book is Death of Persephone: A Murder, a mystery in poems based on the Persephone myth. Previous books include The Last Show on Earth, which explores grief, love and climate change. She is a past poet laureate of Victoria, BC and an award-winning poet, and nonfiction writer who lives on the traditional territories of the Lək̓ʷəŋən (Lekwungen) speaking people. She has edited two poetry anthologies on climate change and water.
