Refractive Errors

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]   March birch: whose rags               appear at first as roses, at least in my loose vision             where brain often arrives before eye and so                            makes trash or groceries of a sleeping infant                         clutched to a cyclist’s chest, reads grackle or rat                         in a black plastic bag pirouetting (how I wish I could bring wind                     to the back of me like that).   Easier to imagine than to see                        and so I tie a knot at the place where I once grew                     There skin refuses to be smooth                          The birch’s once-fat band of summer peels in a single spiral                       from the body, the way doubt untwists from faith’s tight grip                    a hypnotizing curve until I find I’ve driven                       down, around a mountain   Until whatever’s caught                    in the prison of my vision could be either my love                     or my love ending Or some new animal                            that counts on the seasons to change it                                               Or my own flesh out walking its ghost                           Forgive me, at first pass I didn’t recognize myself                 I mistook the places   I’m coming apart           for a froth of viburnum This too happens often           approaching my body at dusk I sometimes see only that tree              on the Schuylkill banks who, it’s true, bends something            like I do both away from and toward                   its face reflected in the river [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]