Tree Without Leaves

\"Margaret, are you grieving/Over Goldengrove's unleaving?\"
- Gerard Manley Hopkins, in \"Spring and Fall: To a Young Child\"

How your leaving unleafed me.

Wide wide lakes of leaves,
The crackle of breaking
Underfoot.

Memory became bare, a crown
Of boughs as taut as the dark-eyed
Nipples of women facing
Fear's dishonest mirrors.

“You have strength I can’t name,”
Once you told me.

Now you must
Know: as winds churn
The leaf-lakes below,
I stand
Rooting with the power
You knew

and I have named Nameless.

On the rough nodes of my evening
Fireflies nestle,
Blooming.