By Kirsteen Swinney
On restless limbs she rises once again, heart reaching
for those sun-soaked branches up above, longing for lightness
to perch like a sparrow in serenity.
She pushes off from the bough below, where she dozed
in shaded stillness, and scales instead with trembling toes
the slender beams that bend and threaten severance.
And when she falls her skin will scrape, her bones will break
against the earth, and on soft grass she’ll lie and wait
with all her might for the agony to just relent.
Some day she’ll walk on crooked joints, heart reaching
like before, for time will allow her the means to concede
that the fault lay in the tree, not in the dream.