All That Light
You make it look easy. The apple of your cheek
green already. The tips of your twig-like fingers
as red as the leaves that crunch under my heavy
feet. I’m still trying to think of the name of this
particular tree, of whether it would add something
to this poem, while you’ve been standing there
as if it’s your thousandth year of doing so, lifting
birds, acorns, all that light. I try to think of a word
that could capture it, something about falling, not
dying but softly stirring all those brilliant leaves.
If it exists, I don’t know it. You tell me you’re sick
of it, of painting, of circling each ring of a broken
branch with your pencil, over and over, afraid
to draw new lines. Around your smile, your eyes.
I don’t know how to tell you that the lines will come
anyway, that we might as well live them, even if
in all the wrong words. And what of the colors,
you might say. Look at you, look at you, I might add.
Lola Dekhuijzen is a poet from Amsterdam. Her poems appear in Angel Exhaust, Abridged and The Gentian.