Uprooting A Tree By Jamie Wendt

Uprooting a Tree | By Jamie Wendt

There is always risk
when uprooting a tree.
Generation after generation,
we yank roots from the earth,
and no one can recall
the first seed, the place a root
splits. My tongue names a new species
that my sons can never understand.
I kiss their foreheads at night
and they grow into strangers,
laughing in their sleep.

I remember the lanky boy in Kove Guberdnia
who ate copper coins from his parents’ wallet
rather than be forced on a ship to America.
He ate half of their fortune.
His fingers were orange, smelled like dirt.
He swung from trees, a monkey-snake,
rushed to me one day across the road
where I often dug, pat soil,
grabbed weeds, planted flowers.
He shoved his splintered hand in my face.
I already sensed I would be a mother to sons.
I tweezed out the tiny wood with my black nails,
licked his red wound
slow and hot, prophesied
he would remain a boy
forever running from himself
without guilt in his chest,
without pages between his lips,
without an ocean to hold him steady.

 – Mena “Minnie” Pretcovitz, 1905