It’s that angle of the year
When you walk open to the wind
Like a taking-off crane
Not bolt fast against it
Like the door of some deserted church

You find a light-soaked tree
And as you curl around behind it
Your body gets quietly smaller
Curling back in time
It’s that tree cave from the 70s
Where your dirt knees folded in unknown prayer
Next to the music box
The broken ballerina you’d replaced with a leaf
Swan Lake notes swirling
up and up and up into the Great Green Relief.