It’s in the awkward starting out
That I’m most afraid, but then
The back of my right ankle thunks
Gently against that upper branch
Beyond my head and longest reach,
And I wiggle my way up
Against the resisting bark
Until I hang from the tenderness
At the back of both my knees, rest
A minute, aim, regret the boxer shorts
Of every mother’s summer regimen,
And then swing once, lurch upward
From the back swing and grab that first
Branch above the new enlightening
Pain of my abraded knee backs.
This is the only way to climb
This high in the geometry
Of this monkey puzzling cottonwood,
But now I have the view and all
The time in my morning’s world
And the time to rebuild the world
Below to the giddy standards
Of my gigantic floral growth,
And the horizon and no time
At all to wonder why, or why
I have so barked my naked legs
So fearlessly, to find this perch,
So unsoaring, sub-eagled And then
I look through the peak of the tree
Into the branch-webbed infinity
Of sky and the next possible reach
For my searching hand.