Nikosia, and: A Country of Red Maples

Nikosia, and: A Country of Red Maples

Nikosia

His Eminence said, Stay for breakfast, but I wanted to walk.

Moments down the path, tank mortars smashed behind me into the palace.

I was standing still and running back.

I broke across the fetch—wind moving—everything in slow motion—saw
a guard shot, his blood stippled against the white presidential wall
          like impressionist art.

My legs ran.
I hid in lemon groves till their vitamin light drained away.

I moved north by shards of mooncast.
I pulled the earth over me and slept by day.

Then, the invasion came everywhere.

I was awakened by a tapping gun muzzle against my temple, and taken.

A stolen home. A stolen room.

They left me in a stark cell swept bare of its furniture, its life.

I heard thumping and thumping. Someone crying, walls away.
I pieced together the faintest, muffled invocations in the next room.

The hours were worse when the crying stopped.

The door to my room barked open. We don't speak of this.

What day was it, next?
Without words, they dragged me outside into a dusty sun, and let me go.

I walked slowly to a town for water.

When there began a light rain, I believed in God.

A Country of Red Maples

You have to understand how powerful memory can be.
You have to feel a tree to understand how firm, how
real and tangible its trunk is. In a country of maples,
I stood as a boy of seven years, looking up as sunlight filtered
down to me through the interlaced cowls of trees, sunlight
filtered in strands like beautiful, hairy light, fallout of dusty prisms,
follicles of light like pollen in a new life I had moved to.
In the heavy groves of maple, the broadness of childhood, I leaned
into the huge tree and felt its resistance, and asked for its durability.
I wanted its rings of concentric years. In a country of autumn
trees in the schoolyard, I stood, gazing up. I am here with you.
Be here with me. The blanket of that massive maple, its deepest
red and almost purple leaves. Oh, memory. Oh, constant life.
Deepest blood-red and purple, I am still here. I am still amazed.