#ive never seen a tree

I’m reading a book on consciousness
that tells me I have never seen a tree
when August calls to tell me
there’s a supermoon outside.

I leave the library to find it,
but the buildings are tall and surround me
and I’m not even 5′8″, I just tell people that.

This is frustrating
until two girls
run towards each other,
each yelling
the other’s name
‘til they collide.

Oh, there it is: full and yellow
against the waterblue sky,
light in the way
the sky sometimes gets at night,
with dark, misty clouds
floating past and around it.

I love the moon and I love girls,
but my book would say
I’ve never seen the moon and
I’ve never seen a girl,

I have only seen this planet’s moon
and these two girls and in my mind
have formed their concept.

The book says language
asks us to understand
the concept as the thing itself,

that the pear tree I steal from
on my walk to church becomes
one part of my belief in trees.

I ride the bus home and pass Le Rouge, as always,
a lingerie and costumes store on the side of the highway
that I can’t for the life of me figure out how to enter.

J says the moon is always
the same size in the sky,
that you can measure it with your finger.

It just appears closer or farther away from
the things we’ve built and believe in.

You live in “New York,”
which feels far away
because I live in “Texas”
in a low, yellow duplex
with a torn, purple hammock.

It seems there is some secret to unlock
in the language of our distance
that could transport me directly to you…

If I could look ahead of me
and not call this space
would it collapse?

When I get off the bus
the sun is setting.

I can’t believe I’ve never seen a sunset. 

Chessy Normile, Great Exodus, Great Wall, Great Party (Copper Canyon Press, 2020)