Broken Branches

There are branches in my brain falling
into decay. If I tried to climb them
now they just might break. When we were
together I grew and pruned them just
to go out on a limb and forecast a dawn
on the horizon, when we might have kids.

Who else but I — the walking talking question
of why, crumbling spinal bridge between Earth
& sky, unresolvable harbinger of tension
between free will & fate — massacred
this tree at its roots, who harbored so much
life between cracks in its bark, where
woodpeckers peered through memories measured
by years in its rings?

And even as it, as we, were falling, like
a playful baby Appleseed I planted another,
premature answer to my prayers. She who,
like me, came before the was called,
a bit too eager. So sometimes when I look
at her, I see devil who cares, colonizing
the ground cleared for our forecast forest
with feigned innocence, patting down sand
with ample tail, to build the dam I’m
swirled in, swept from my great attempted escape
by a love inseparable
from self-preservation.