The BlueIris Semi-Nightly Poetry Break, 4/20/08

[BlueIris]

"The Tree of Unknowing"

Uncertainty, take me into the forest
leaf by leaf—

where an immigrant sits in a Jersey slum,
a young mother rocking her child.

Where, along the endless road, are you going away from me like a cloud?
Like a cloud, like a cloud?

I lay in your arms, watching your lips.
I touched your chin with my tiny fingers.

Your loneliness sang to me,
each word a crumb of light, burning in the skull—

until a galaxy of sparks flashed among the branches,
lighting the way where?

I lifted my head. What was it I saw
in your gaze, the maze

of you: corridors of years, corridors of war, black wheat-hair ripening—
the last shape sown in closing eyes.

The words have their own woods.
Where the words can't go further: where the woods begin

that make us mad, too real and not
real enough. Whose memory was it? Why did I feel such joy?

Look, the cloud-tree will never die—

I wonder who you were: I wonder
because you were.

—Suji Kwock Kim

[BlueIris]

1. Kick.

[BlueIris]

2. Kick.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

3. My dear BlueIris!

Well, I don't get it...

But I still like it!

Thank you...

:hi:

[BlueIris]

4. I think it's just a speaker reminiscing about ancestors, literal and figurative.

I read it as a poem about the marginalization and oppression of immigrant/refuge culture, history and stories.