Tree of Life Review

SEPTEMBER 2007

NEW IN THE TREE OF LIFE REVIEW

AIRMAIL: Bodhi Blues — A Year in India: Questioning The Maitreya Project by Jessica Falcone

COLUMN: Storiedmusic — The Night I Walked Out by DJ T’challah

NOVEL EXCERPT: In a State of Partition by Aneesha Capur

UP THE CREEK: Editor’s Notes — Art, Yoga, and Abu Ghraib



Vision

i.

I see a crack in the sidewalk.
I am the steerage; my words crease
slow-moving water.Look,
here is a curb. And here,
the curb falls
to uneven stone.

The blind woman on my arm
carries her cane like a torch.
Her touch is light.

ii.

I am the blind one
in this game my cousins and I played
along the banks of a Wisconsin lake.
Of all the senses, my vision
the one I would cast off
for a lidded world, warm and red,
for soft northern earth, water smells,
wave-talk and too-loud birds.

I yield to my navigable instincts.
I lean my whole trust onto the arm of
one cousin who cannot hear
and another who cannot speak.

Look,their bodies say,
here by the water,
the earth
disappears.


M. Frost

M. Frost

When not writing, M. Frost works as a veterinarian in Pennsylvania. Finishing Line Press published her first chapbook, Cow Poetry and other notes from the field. Her work has appeared in numerous journals, including Philadelphia Stories, Schuylkill Valley Journal of the Arts, Mad Poets Review, Potomac Review, and Nimrod.

M. FROST IN THIS EDITION:
POEM: Vision