Muscle/Tree Memory
I have a memory and it lives in a tree.
All trees. It lives in all trees.
The one I climbed in college.
How I sat inside of it.
I’m there saying hello to my favorite professor.
The one who made time/worked part-time/shared a professorship with his wife:
for his family.
How sweetly he talked of family in our class.
He loved my poems. Told me to write my assignment in poem form.
History was a story told on the TV: 57 channels and everything is on.
Blue books handed out. We watched a collage of TV moments and wrote.
What do these clips mean?
I am full of muscle memory. I time travel in trees.
The new one I climb into that my husband introduces me to.
I stand inside and still myself so the noise in my head calms.
The moss waits for me to catch up into waiting for what is next.
The cello is the only instrument I listen to when I really write.
It dives down deep enough to excavate my genius who lives in the walls.
My genius, she lives in trees.
My muscle memory is wooden.
She plays on the cello.
I pluck her strings or does she pluck me?
I am/she is moss covered. Green and thriving. Wet, she waits for me.
I work to be a tree. Still, solid but still moving. Tree.
1.24.2018/Nancy Schatz Alton