Re-membering/re-conceiving adolescence

Back Then

Outside the window, morning sun
glances and glints on the green tears
of the weeping willow. Those long
sinuous branches sway languidly
in the morning breeze that slides
down the valley, cradled
between the mountains. The lime
green of the leaves placed just so
on each golden branch, and
behind, that blue backdrop of
mountainside, dense with pines, cedars, fir...

I remember... I was sixteen, writing a poem on
the green willow and blue mountains,
the ones outside the house I grew up in.
Pierced by the beauty, what else
could I do but seek the clean words and
ancient bones, the release
of exquisite pain, as the terrible joy
of being seized by life
flooded my adolescent systems
beyond repair.

09.03.09 Gyllian Davies