Demain (Tomorrow)
after Folon
Surely trees are reaching for some voice
the winter burglarized.
While they were sleeping
luxuriously in thick green
featherbeds, the wind slid
into their arms, kissed them till they
were shaken
dark bones clawing for the stars
who speak a language of farewells.
Strip anything
and there's an agony of form
contorting,
desperate to acquire
what only camouflage can proffer
or failing that resist.
If trees do nothing but foreshadow,
if they persist
like war-cripples waving deformed stumps
at the windows of the comfortable,
if they hail a black planet in the dawn sky.
If it hurts to look at this,
don't look,
only keep thinking
one day ahead of yourself.
~ Joan Colby
Published in Pedestal Magazine, Issue 55 (2009)