The Government of Nature

Weeping Willow

59 Weeping Willow That which goes against the Dao comes to an early end. —Laozi Eyelashes on the breeze, up under it, bristling like the peacock, the trunk a hand sitting on its wrist, rooted and bound in the earth, in our wishes, the ice cream truck just a horn honk and bell away, down the street, vanilla and chocolate, mixed or separate, cones or cups, banana splits when we were rich with somebody hitting the number in the street, my mother counting the coins in her hands, telling the driver to wait at the curb for us, hand signals from the porch while we climbed down from this tree of peeping eyes, unruly in the way nature orders things to be, we climbed from safety to be the thing the willow kept from us, the world and all its dangers, a mother too full with ache to guard her children, leaning on them in some wrong ways, passing the pain from one soul to another, forgetting the songs that can show us the way to knowing. ...