THE BRANCH

In the density of the night

the darkness has many arms.

Pick up any fallen thing

and use it to reconnect to the world,

because you have forgotten how.

A fallen branch may be your proxy.

Take it, thrust it into the dark,

rattle its thick lattice

until something falls free,

drops to the earth

like a heart beat.

You might be hungry

but that is not why you

bite into the fruit,

the forbidden.

You do so to end

the mind’s mastications

with your mouth’s.

And you know this

though you don’t know you do.

Only after the sun has risen,

and your back’s against a redwood,

is sleep possible—

because an owl, who

had hooted all night long,

is now the same angel  

watching over you

from her nest, a cavity

created by a fallen limb.