Still
I have been studying the trees
in my yard, the way they stand,
unflinching,
in their brown armor.
I remember him telling me
to have a thick skin, be tough,
to let insults and hurt bounce off.
It is true, the tree uses bark
to weather cold and storms,
hardly blinks when two lovers
carve their names in its flesh.
But this morning, one bleeds
a sticky sap and I wonder
if it is grieving
for something or someone.
I touch its wound, sniff,
think of my father
gone ten years,
and know that sometimes even
the thickest skin without warning
cannot help but split open.
—Neil Carpathios
I read this poem and I think about the despair and depression that comes on so suddenly: “sometimes even/the thickest skin without warning/cannot help but split open.” So suddenly and yet so ubiquitously, like a tree bleeding thick sap. I don’t know any other way of dealing with it other than to let it go until there’s no more sap—and to know there are others out there going through the same. This poem, from Neil Carpathios’s 2009 collection Beyond the Bones, is dedicated to Anna.
-R
