DoesThat Tree With White Papery Bark Want To Be Me?

[Billy]

Does That Tree With White Papery Bark Want To Be Me?

Once, I jumped
in a freezing lake,
naked, in shock, quickly swam
to the dock, scrambled out.
It might as well have been
a lake of fire.

What if I'd been the burning
bush, my skin as red
as the time I was stung
by a swarm of bees.
Somehow it seems right.

Ten, I blindly ran
into a patch of blackberries.
I unhooked
the crown of thorns
piercing my body
and crawled like a serpent

to an opening where the sky
appeared as the mouth
of a leviathan, blood trickling
from my wounds, pain
only a sting of memory.

[BobBradshaw]

I like the imaginative language deployed in the telling of some painful memories. Good, active verbs. Another success.

[CalebMurdock]

I love the natural language, and the vitality, of your poems. I guess this goes into the "kids do the darnedest things". I've never been so adventurous. I agree that the poem works well.

[Billy]

Thanks Bob and Caleb.
Caleb, I write in the style William Carlos Williams in his later career--writing in the language I speak and hear spoken. Of course I do not write with his skill.