catapult magazine

Daphne

by Amy Carpenter-Leugs

When the trees are gone
who will remind us
to be wooden?

Behind our house now
a weed forest
the kind that lives contentedly with
cul-de-sacs.

Weed forest floods
every spring
ducks swim the roots
mud then dried mud
birthing insects that safely burrow
under the wet warped bark.

The big winds come
the trees fall,
they serve as our personal land of faery,
playthings for humans,
companions in their death.

When the trees are gone
who will remind us
to be impenetrable?

The weed forest has
one great queen a
black walnut with thick
twisted trunk
branches raised up high

like a lady holding her parasol
out of reach
while street urchins surround her.

There’s a constant puddle at her feet
Yet somehow she remains
Daphne incarnate,
grown large and old and gnarled all these years,
thrust up through the crust
of antiquity.

Daphne who ran from Apollo
he with his shining light
he with his hands out offering
always offering
he with his medicine
(injected straight into the veins it animates the old who have lost their minds)
he with his music
(he never brags that his harp came from Hermes the trickster the lowly messenger)
he with his ideas
(constructions like air but more beautiful).

Daphne who ran from it all
ran through a forest of sisters and brothers
the veil of leaves her wedding veil
the labyrinth of roots her sanctuary
the toadstools puffing their green mystery clouds
as she tread
Daphne cried, Father, please help me
and was turned into a tree.
Purposeless, protected
and finally her own.

When the trees are gone,
maybe we can fix the oxygen,
maybe we can find new homes for the birds,
maybe we can make new foods
but who will catch our collective fog in its branches
and pull it down
trunk to roots
earth soil earth hard earth ground.

Who will remind us how we grow
when we stand solid
unfriendly, untalkative,
wooden.