Lush, and: Vanishing Act

Abstract

Lush, and: Vanishing Act Bob Hicok (bio) Keywords trees, homecoming LUSH Trees talk to each other,the book on my kitchen tabletold me before I went to bed last night,through roots that braid and scentsemitted to warn of predators.They even seem to make friends,encroaching less upon the canopyof a bud, for whom they’ll bring backa curry if they run down to the shop.Old trees, anyway. Commercial forestsaren't around long enoughfor this intimacy to evolve, so your Christmas tree’sdefinitely a loner and your Chanukah tree’san interesting melding of two faiths,good on you, you hybrid m.f. I’m looking at a scrap of fog a quarter mile offand wonderingif I touch a cedar here,will a cedar there feel my affectionat the rateof three inches per second,or if I bite it, if I tell itI’m lonely for what it hasthough swaddledby learning yet againwhere intelligence hides, how thoughts flowthrough air and groundin a way I can't invent, only destroy. I don’t know how I’ll ever prune a tree againor give up on the whisper Godto suggest the engine of thoughtfulnessthat surrounds us, the wombing fluency of matter [End Page 154] to matter in its mutationsto itself, to connectform to form and listenand rile and roar. Swaddled, embraced,absorbed: I live inside the dreamof a mind that goes as faras going goes, call lifehomunculus, call all distancesclosed, call touching and fondnesswhat they are: roads home. [End Page 155] VANISHING ACT Don’t know why I care about ashes.Probably I think of the firesthey’re estranged from. The impulseto see solitude everywhere I lookhas me touch my dictionaryto soothe all the novelslost inside it, that’ll nevermake it out. The impulse to break.I think in a dream last nightI wanted to have an affair:I was searching a buildingfor the office of a woman I’d met(I believe on tv) and wantedto sit across from in a cafe,shaping whispers. But I’m happywith my wife, everything about her.She’s very good at being late for work,at getting lost in the thoughtsof plants. Part of me wants the worldto end. Part of me wants to pick it upand tell it how much the color greenhas meant to us. Conflictedis a word I’m troubled by,said the troubadour, unhappywith his options for rhyme.Evicted, predicted. Then he rememberedIt’s just a song, just a lute,and that the majority of musicis the labor of practical birds.Remembered for like ten seconds,then tried once again to climb the air. [End Page 156] Bob Hicok Bob Hicok’s ninth book, Hold, is just out from Copper Canyon Press. Copyright © 2018 Center for Literary Publishing