Soul Over Lightning: Poems

The Poet at the Tree

| 76 The Poet at the Tree When Robert Burlingame, my teacher, dwelled at the tree, the cottonwood fought lightning until he folded his hands. When he emerged from its limbs with pigeon droppings on his boots, it was justice for men who need to walk far from home, away from the unreliable river and the pueblo hidden from view. When Robert recited at the stone gate, I learned you must speak when the cholla bleeds for you. I listened to the prickly pear rip thorns for Robert’s lines about flowers, lost arroyos, and the wounded owl. They became words about the woman he left in Las Cruces when it thundered. Robert vanished under the branches, his voice hidden in the tree. I fought against nothing, yearned for the cottonwood that stood for our names—ages of veins that were touched gently by the falling leaves when he died. ...