In the Weeping Willow Tree

In the weeping willow tree I have been anywhere
Imagined myself anywhere. In Africa
The one great green tree++I believe is Africa
And the dry desert mud beneath it everywhere

Cracking,++like in a cartoon earthquake , racing, cracking
A faultline cracking toward the infinite, a thousand
Faultlines, each cracking++open its own path, a thousand
Paths to the bordered++infinite horizon, breaking

Open the Earth a thousand times++to mark on the surface
Of the Earth a disappearing++way to the disappearing
Limit, a cartoon earthquake.++I climb disappearing
Into the weeping willow tree, Africa, surfac-

ing in my own++absence, an olive shadow moving
Behind green waves of shadow, deep++green willow leaves
Seven years old, each leaf turns over, the deep leaves
Turn shallow, a pale++gray-green underneath, the living

Desert the living underside of the living skin,++each
Leaf, shallow leaf, deep leaf, each++disappearing me
The shadow of each leaf a feather stuck in me
Rippling in wind++as I climb Africa again, each

Morning, each summer day. The shade++of the tree relieves
The desert in the shade, the cracking desert.++Feathers
Borrow me.++They, without my body, are not feathers
Without my mind to make++the shadows wings,++are leaves

Image: Weeping Willow by Paul Sableman, licensed under CC 2.0.

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Shane McCrae

Shane McCrae's most recent books are The Gilded Auction Block (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019) and Sometimes I Never Suffered (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020). He has received a Whiting Writer’s Award, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Lannan Literary Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a NYSCA/NYFA Fellowship. He lives in New York City and teaches at Columbia University.

Latest posts by Shane McCrae (see all)

• In the Weeping Willow Tree - October 1, 2021