When I was younger I would arrive on Sundays at 6 o clock and foster pools of melancholy under the tree where my name was carved. Each blade of grass was a verve bridge between the earth and sky under little feet that did not crush, just crumple. I looked for salvation in anthills and stolen glimpses of motor home backyards and the way the sun rose on a curve over the graveyard. I looked for answers in the way the sky envelopes all at the highest point of the swing, and each creak of chains was a croak that spoke for the burden of the ground. I looked for friends in the sound of sprinklers and the rush of crows and the brazen way the breeze billowed loose skirts. Each breath was a token of prayer in a Sunday temple with dirt floors and no roof.

I found him in the ground.
I think he was growing for a long while.
At first I saw the trees shudder,
like proud mothers giving brisk birth to beauty.
They sang in the wind silent and swift blessings
like archaic gargoyles standing guard over the ground.
And then it was the grass,
that rustled sweetly,
a murmur like a crowd of pleasant welcomes.
Finally it was me,
who found him gasping in the dirt under my tree,
with tousled brown hair
and green veins that screamed
soft, vulnerable secrets buried deep in the ground.
He was not bewildered but bright eyed,
sensuous,
felt the earth and the sky and me,
everything in between,
felt the graves
and the metal roots of homes
and his matrons of rough bark
reaching upward in revelry.
He blinked, looked at me,
touched my hands with sap sticky fingers,
lifeblood left lingering on flushed skin that was
not as earthen as his but still soft with earthen clarity,
brushed bark lips on flesh bruised
in the boisterous bullying by the surface and the sun,
looked at me with eyes so brown
they spoke worlds of passive life, fertile, fragile, found.
A smile, sweet and sad,
like lemons,
like trees with carved memories slitting skin,
like old music thrumming underfoot,
a feral beat,
a heartbeat,
beating up as the sun beat down,
there was a pulse in the park that day.