Forest

When I found the tick,

I forgot the rules I’d read:

with thumb and forefinger I severed its body from mine—

just wanting it out of me,

as I’ve heard people say of babies and cancers.

I felt a mix of tenderness and disgust

for it then, like the twin

streams of blood and water

rinsing down the drain.

That summer I used English only

to write poems and speak with my lover,

yet the French insisted on speaking English to me:

You visit forêt? asked the pharmacist

in charge of medical emergencies like mine.

I heard f-o-r-a-y. Foray in a forêt.

Non, I said, jamais.

Not far from there, pears grow

in bottles suspended from the trees

to make a potent digestif.

As long as the fruit remains submerged

in the liqueur, the pear keeps whole indefinitely.

When my mother locked me out—

I was two, and three . . . —

I’d go to our willow tree,

wrap myself in its whips,

stroke its many sharp eyebrows with my hands.

The pharmacist asked me to

remove my tights to see where

the tick had lodged,

not far from my crotch. Exposed

like that, I thought I should feel more

embarrassed than I did.

I used to believe

I had been preserved by something.

Now I think I am

the preserving spirit—with my leafy fragrance, sound of wings

in the canopy, blood

draining swiftly from the head

as I look up, neither host nor guest. Exile

speaking for one reason only,

and the reason is love.