Watchful Tree

School starts for Jonah, too.

An eye-like impression on Boo’s birch bark
Keeps innocent watch where he sleeps

or sits alone.

Summer is closed.

School begins, winds blow & bend.  Boo attends.
There are no photographs to share.  People ask us nothing.

He would be starting grade six but for this:

Branching cells inside, neuron dances gone awry.
Whipping leaves that lash & cut, pull & fall…

For days now, yet, the birch of him has stood:
An undisturbed instability;

his mood impermanent as paper

(covers rock, loses to the scissors)

His mood impermanent as paper.