If Forever

Part One

in six parts

1. to let the way be hard.
2. to let it hurt,
   and to feel it.
3. to let an oak awake,
   as winter’s cold sleep.
4. to let the pain change things.
5. to let it grow leaves, in spring.
6. to make the leaves fall.

Part Two

to get it the colors, the mystery, like green the earth that all leaves return to that from which they came, which wasn’t simply the trees. to red, then to yellow and then to brown. to have a life, sure, to have a pile of leaves. to have it, as a body. to have dirt, as having food to eat. to love the earth, as having wood to burn. to make it easy as you care; to make it easy. to make it if you care. care less.

Part Two
Part Three
Part Four.

Part Five

if nothing will fall, let it be nothing. without concern, on the end of its way, the way it would grow, that it would fall, from forever’s oak, forever’s ache.

April 1972