Gary Browe - JE-01

1. CLIMBING TREES

Give a kid a cardboard box
and it will become for him
a clubhouse
with secret knocks and passwords
or a rocket ship to the moon.

And when it's old
he'll smash out the ends,
climb inside ...
pretending …

… to be an army tank,
mowing down the unseen enemy,
the bully up the road.

I had a friend
when I was nine.
We made a pact
to be friends for life.

How foolish I was
to think that relationships
endure.

Even when I was alone
in later years
I could not reach to him …

He had changed so radically
no words
could renew the bond
we had made as children.

There was a tree
in our neighborhood.

An old, majestic oak
we called "Big Brownie."

In its trunk nails were driven
      two or three in a cluster,
            like footholds
                  in a mountain.

I would take those winding stairs,
follow them high
through the twisted maze
of branches.

Up,
as far as I could
until I came to this small small fork

far above the houses…

There I'd sit for hours,
separated from family
and superficial friends. …

Fearful
when the wind blew
too swiftly.

I trembled
with the tree
in harmony

as a storm approached.