Men are trees <br />long rotting the ground around them <br />raining fruit, <br />but truly lurk in ambush <br />for the day they will give at once <br />their whole self. <br /> <br />Nestled over a bed of coals, <br />we are no better than vegetables and suet <br />plunging into the rolling kettle, <br />melting into strings. <br /> <br />My flight wriggles safely through arrows <br />to land on these precious carpets <br />slung outdoors, <br />and there to ripen like day on the simultaneous <br />feasts of belly and heart. <br /> <br />I swim without predators <br />in a cistern swollen to a pond to a sea <br />by the loving trips of a well bucket. <br /> <br />Stones roll away <br />and our ancestors are naked. <br />Have they not bred their imagination <br />into sphinxes and gryphons <br />of loathing and affection? <br /> <br />Over-rich and over-dunged affection! <br />It glows over the night’s land <br />out of a century of patient composting <br />not soon burnt out, <br /> <br />a panoramic Arctic twilight <br />that makes the schools froth the surface <br />and leap into the maw. <br /> <br />Are you ashamed, embarrassed, outraged, <br />humiliated, terrified, crushed? <br />Then you have learned to love. <br />Give the whole self at once to this forest.<br /><br />Edward Wright Haile<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/family-reunion-6/
