too many years I tried to feel with my head,
to think with my heart,
to love with only skin,
as though all the parts of me
were parts only
and not the whole machine, churning gears,
turning toward something grand I couldn’t see
here, this finger like a leaf
is, too, the root,
the trunk,
the seed,
and every branch
of where I go and what I do, is all the tree,
if not the forest too.