books that don't tear

 

before words

there was a series of promises

that inside a tree there was a tree

and inside that tree another tree

and inside that tree an owl

and if you hid the owl

inside your mother’s shoe

and if your mother read that shoe to you

and you carried that book of shoe

like a locket shaped like you

that hung above the breast that fed you

held you and sea shelled you

when you slept in the tide of arms

and washed up warm

with a duck a comb a bottle cap

a home for an owl and a nest of trees

where a train of letters that spell your name

departs the same bookshelf 

each morning and night

and always will