magick tree of healing and fidelity

I have nurtured you when neglected,

cut away the brambles and ivy

that may have strangled you

in your slow growth to bloom,

 

invaders have cut away your budding,

cut the years of life I nurtured

poisoned the life around you

and tied your fragile, worried stalk

to a splintered piece of dead wood,

my darling magnolia, my wilderness,

 

now, like the newly nestless birds,

who shared the wilderness with us;

whose eggs are who knows where

and who have now flown, so must i

 

antonia zenkevitch (Spring 2009)