what is in the process of happening:

here is the image, the boy faces out

at the world, the trunk hard against his back,

he has discovered he is stuck on the branch,

having climbed so high he cannot turn

to the trunk and climb his way down, and this moment

when he can see the fall, the ground, unnerves him,

freezes him, thin, shaking legs, sweaty palms

and only his ears working, and it is his ears his mother

works to guide him back down to the earth again.

It may be a mother or a wife, even a daughter

if given heed, the feminine side then — perhaps

even his own, could, if the woman (the yin) is given

the chance, talk him down from this place

where the needle and vein remain entwined;

an eternal dance for the moon, an eclipse

of the wyrd that may have been.

So now, like Lieu, he finds his foot on the bath

and his other on the goat, he has bought the needle

wrought far from any sacred ground and waits

only for dusk to settle so that he might travel again

aware that one time he may not return,

instead succumb to the wish he has kept

like a tangle of well-worn fishing line

in the deepest pool of misplaced anguish —

or perhaps his atoms and snapses are merely susepticle

to the longing, and the piercing of the needle makes significant

the way woad once did when calling the warrior forth,

and in this tree, willow for the tears he has wept in secret,

he rests, bleeding years into misery of the desire for more

and he would like to find a voice to reclaim the road

and talk himself down and only his mother's voice

could convince him to turn to face the trunk and let one foot

and then the other and find the way down to safety

but his mother is only a fleeting memory that passes.