Platanus wrightii
Arizona sycamore
Amanda Jean Bailey
The storm took off your arm
and carried away the child
who’d grown out of your stump--
roots to roots to creek turned torrent.
This is a loss you will wear.
You will curl around the sadness
as you’ve curled before,
bending away from your thirst
to the whims of the water,
leaving an absence you’ll display
but whose story we will never hear.
Your base is now belled like a gown
but worn like a shawl warming
a small cave, a rotten core.
These holes of mourning
are dwelled upon,
and within, by waxwings,
a Mexican jay, and a Northern flicker.
Nests rest upon the losses
and you quiver with song,
while you reach upwards,
shedding sheaths of skin
like drafts of letters.
You light the trail along the water
In grief, we too
become riparian.
We rest at your roots,
we beg for your birds.
~~~~~
Amanda Jean Bailey is a poet, educator, and ethnographer, and is working on her doctorate at the University of Arizona.