Sunlit Wedding Ring
We walk, close but apart, through brush
And my love finds his heaving breath,
His hand pressed flat against a tree. I am caught
By the ring he won’t take off.
Golden, shiny-smooth with fingers’ oil.
Sentinel, watchwoman, attuned to his breathing.
Sometimes when the light glosses the perfect
Curving angle, his finger seems broken.
I press my avaricious spine to the tree,
Wondering if she feels like this about him.
Our smoky breath trails upwards.
My eyes trace the tree’s trunk.
A sparkling handful of willowy tissue glistens,
Bending around the branches of the wintered oak.
Streaming sunlight, watery rarity,
Trickles, slides between our numb fingers.
A gust, sharply biting as glass,
Rasps among the remaining dead leaves,
Catching and tugging their frail, shriveled forms.
I almost see the wind scratching through the branches.
Made alive like Eve, given gasps and sighs,
The trees’ hands reach upward, toward
Something I can’t see through all the weaving
Sunlight around their wrists.
And my love finds his heaving breath,
His hand pressed flat against a tree. I am caught
By the ring he won’t take off.
Golden, shiny-smooth with fingers’ oil.
Sentinel, watchwoman, attuned to his breathing.
Sometimes when the light glosses the perfect
Curving angle, his finger seems broken.
I press my avaricious spine to the tree,
Wondering if she feels like this about him.
Our smoky breath trails upwards.
My eyes trace the tree’s trunk.
A sparkling handful of willowy tissue glistens,
Bending around the branches of the wintered oak.
Streaming sunlight, watery rarity,
Trickles, slides between our numb fingers.
A gust, sharply biting as glass,
Rasps among the remaining dead leaves,
Catching and tugging their frail, shriveled forms.
I almost see the wind scratching through the branches.
Made alive like Eve, given gasps and sighs,
The trees’ hands reach upward, toward
Something I can’t see through all the weaving
Sunlight around their wrists.