Since 'It' Was

Belém 2010


What urged me to come
and say about was the misfortune I had to endure last week in Belém.

I left the ride
near the (summer) restaurants
and set in my own way,
enjoying the rain?,

glad to go by my favourite tree
in Belém. The way to CCB.

For my surprise, as I was going forward, a memory lapse.

Yes, [some time had passed since my last visit to these flat gardens, and I forgot]
where the tree used to stand.

So strange,
never in my life this had happen
before, I must be getting old.

All I could see there were the other trees,
with ‘whom’ I never develop a friendship, and,
it seemed,

all the seagulls of the river mouth were there too.

Unusual.

Where is my tree? I thought.
— As if they were ever mine—
But suddenly I came to realize
they
was probably someone's
trees.
Yes, trees,

the trees I was happy to be passing by,
since I decided early in the morning to go
and see Bacon thinking about Ingres, was
an embrace tree of two distinct trees, as if
they could be anthropomorphized into a couple.

I kept on going
forward, intrigued, and
it wasn't till I got very close
that I understood my memory is [still in good shape.
What a horrifying image that was,]
to know about my own memory

with the death of a friend.
Well, I wouldn’t say it was death what petrified me.
Death is hurtful but it’s natural. One way or another
we all expect death.

Call it a new beginning...

Love!
What ever...

For all I know
(or knew) this tree was a monument.
Old and crumbling, but very strong
and capable of many more
friendships like the one
I was happy to enjoy.

Someone had passed and
decided it was no more and
took her stand away, leaving
just the roots for all to see.

And if death was the issue, my friend
was stripped from the new beginning.

She still exists in me, but no new friends will come
to appreciate how wonderful it could be,
that two very different trees
would grow side by side from the same ground
into a whirling twist,

dancing to the sky. Isn’t that what trees do with the wind?
Why take ‘it’ away?