With Time

I remember fracturing my first limb

My body didn't hurt,

but I was definitely scared

I lowered myself to the ground

from the aching tree branch

I called my father over

to take a look at what I had done

"It's split pretty bad."

You could see through the branch

"What do we do?"

The summer heat swallowed me

my heart started to feel heavy

and a lump grew in my throat

"We wait."

I was only eight

and I had no idea how to say

how terrible I felt

for breaking my favorite maple tree.

After that summer,

we moved South

Where the leaves are broader

and the air is saltier

Under a layer of clothes,

I found a collection of Robert Frost poems

On each poem,

there were a collection of notes

At the age of nine,

I thought writing in books was wrong

When I asked my father why,

he said his friend let him borrow it

Over twenty years ago

when they were both in high school

I read some of the poems

and they reminded me of home

It was the end of November

And I knew I was missing autumn.

We bought a plastic white pine tree that winter

It smelled new,

but it didn't smell fresh

Even though I didn't believe in Santa,

I still asked him to take me back to my maple tree

It felt like vacation rather than home,

wearing shorts on Christmas Day

I picked up my first guitar

and learned what music felt like on my fingers

Figuring out how to make sounds

with just my hands and six strings

was how I distracted myself

In a little blue journal,

I wrote down everything I learned

So then I could teach myself again

if I ever had to

We moved several times since that warm winter

and the little blue journal is lost among the unpacked boxes.

This past spring,

I have reached adulthood

and have been living in my home town

about two miles away from my favorite maple tree

I drove by once, 

just to see the old branch,

swollen with sap and new bark

and I remembered every feeling I experienced

After fracturing my first limb

and how Robert Frost taught me

that a poem begins with a lump in the throat

or with homesickness

perhaps a lovesickness

And that a complete poem is

Where emotion finds thought

However,

it may take many years

before the thought finds its words.