How do I explain,
when I watch the branch of a crabapple
nodding in the gentle breeze,
that I feel it through the window.
Her twigs and leathery leaves
play across my cheek, just here.
Please, this is no metaphor;
understand that the air is my
body, and also the tree.
The eyes of myself are watching
my thin, branching arm
bob in the wind, my own breath.
By understand I mean
stand under, which
only your body can do.
If your fingers are (and they are)
the wind, tell me- whose
cheek? whose feathers?
What craggy mountaintop
would you feel, suddenly,
like iron on your lips?
