Yet Benign, You Do Not Sway

Yet Benign, You Do Not Sway
By Renessa Visser

You stand, all ash and empty
heart, your scars a violence to my eyes.
I gather at your feet, a useless, persistent
presence, like a dying man denying death -
I'm a witness to your wounds.

 There's smashed glass against
your wood, fires lit within your roots, they've
burned out all the weight within your trunk. And I cry,
for your gravity to be gained, for your strength to
grow green within the burns, to choke the hands
that gouged your heart.

 Yet benign, you do not sway, your
silence holds a love I cannot learn -
in strength, you gather height,
and grow into the light.
And in the spring, I’ll come to hear your
voice, leaning in the wind, your words
a whisper on the leaves. Your scars
the ridges for my spine, firmer than
the ground from which we’ve grown.

---

Renessa Visser
Poet & Student

Photography by Eastlyn & Joshua Tolle