its roots run deep ---deeper than the
-----hollowness
of what wouldn’t come early in school
deeper than the birdlike way attention
-----settled on a branch
then left it swaying ---abandoned
Did it begin behind my father’s eyes
reflecting London Ontario in depression
when his mother died
& his father was left standing
a barren maple on a winter street
Did it begin behind my mother’s eyes
in a boarding school in China
where her parents’ love came by mail
(when the mail could get through)
a blossom dropping petals in the rain
I’ve ripped out every trace of that feeling
like the cedar shrubs from our back
-----garden
whose roots I battle each spring
but I know ---oh too well
what’s just beneath the surface
(This poem first appeared in Wascana Review)
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