wishing tree sutra

for Barbie


somewhere between the city park’s
sycamores & the
           corner market’s brick walls a
chestnut grows festooned with frail
                                    white flowers
in April, spiked fruit come July,
            year-round manila
tags passersby tie to generous limbs you’ve
never seen being as you’re
           thousands of miles east of the moon &
these few stars in a city sky I have to
wish on—
             you in combat boots & tulle,
bleached hair streaked cerulean, black eyeliner:
another performance—
           
                                  this chestnut, the
trunk black, bark rugged, sculpted,
topographic—you sick with migraine &
life but sticking, sticking—abides across
changes, never identical never not—
               
                                                in your poem
a girl shedding teardrops & teardrops next to
a wishing tree drawn in colored
                                               pencils, &
soon enough chestnuts shall
fall,
          atavistic creatures on autumn’s
reflective wet sidewalks & sure,
                        a big moon weeps too:
we’re never here always there


Jack Hayes
© 2016