MY TREE SONS  

Consider the embryo.

It has no limbs at first,

oval-shaped, a watery comma

a pregnant pause, one might say.

It does not resemble a sapling stick

(moreso, its seed), yet both are a trunk.

Years later you said they were all boys,

those minuscule dead possibilities

swirling in a dark dysfunctional womb.

They had to be, you said,

as females are stronger.

Though they had yet to sprout

translucent branchings

I dreamed of pink party dresses

baseball bats, first solo rides

upon two wheels, giddy swimmers

adoring the ocean, sun, sand.

I saw castle upon castle.

The first birthed in the toilet.

We looked for something with which

to fish it (him?) out; hospital's orders.

Yes, they said, human. Nothing more.

They stuck me in a hallway because

the rooms were full, and there

I bled alone for half a day

until the DNC, refusing anesthesia,

afraid, like a small child, of darkness.

Masks, straps, pain.

After the second, I was alone,

so my mother visited, but she was

uncomfortable with such despair

could not gather herself fully into a chair,

and I sent her away. She thanked me.

The third time I slunk into the basement

stayed for weeks avoiding light, sound, solace.

I had to alone with my.......son?

He was the best of company,

both of us leaving, leaving,

heart in heart.

They would have been grown now,

those non-strapping young men

(strapping is not in our gene pool).

They'd have been sensitive, tender souls

who loved to read, would need strong glasses,

be chronically teased

might have had strange passions,

like dancing, or pranks, or raising

scores of scary, short-lived snakes.

My dead sons are three;

Sometimes I ponder them, shrimp-like,

pulsing, and then suddenly still.

Often, I think of them as trees;

see them arching towards blue.

Leaves unfurl: hands, roots their feet

shy and secretive like concentric rings,

giddy sap rising in sweet -smelling springs.

But I know my boys best when the trees

wave in the breeze, the branches,

arms, not wholly here or there,

yet somewhere, their tiny issue

in the cosmos, somewhere --

in the air, on the air, against the air.