Legend With Usual Cruelties

A thousand-year redwood—

one ring encircling the other—

concentrically outdoing in circumference—

protecting—what grew before.

Dimensions beyond the obvious are

science, fiction, legend an adolescent will wrap her

mind around concentrically—

that there could be

replicas of her, unaware of her or wrapping

a parallel mind around a possibility of replication.

So legend replicates legend. Thus,

you are legend despite merely requisite

dimensions and flyaway hair with its layers

of disobedience and gleam.

You are a legend with usual cruelties.

You are a legend because one day you are kind

and don’t laugh at the poet saying

struggle could end if only.

You’re a legend because you picked up a leaf,

a red leaf, and tried to figure, its spine now brittle like

your grandmother and thin but beautiful

how it grew on that tree and after a season

of impudent green, turned color,

like the sky will, every night, and

fluttered to brown hard earth.

They are talking of you even

now in a dimension transecting folly,

of your queasy appreciation of the gift.

So, beloved, you can sleep, and rest,

assured you inspire in more than one world.