Like a Glove
Brian Wallace Baker
a tree isn't a head of hair on a long neck
but a whole hourglass body reflected
in unseeable underground forests:
sprawling cities of roots holding hands,
praying to the soil; at church,
we learn the body
is a glove the spirit comes out of
at the end of the long journey; one night
a solitary goose slipped silently over
dealerships, hotels, restaurants,
reflecting the light like a ghost
renouncing the earth;
the earth, like a tree,
is more than we can see
with our naked-infant eyes:
a sphere of gas like a glass eye
gazing at the universe, like a glove,
for the spirit can also be compared to a glove,
as can the goose and the black sky
it brushed against like a shopping bag
caught in the wind, and what better way
to understand the soul
than to compare it to the wind,
which makes the trees dance and sing
Writer’s Notebook
I find it captivating that trees, as well as other plant life, are creatures we never really get a good look at because the deepest, most vital parts of them are underground. This serves as a metaphor for how I view the connection between body and spirit. We are much more than we can understand through our physical senses.
In college, I read the Pulitzer Prize winning play W;t by Margaret Edson. I’ve forgotten most of the details, but I still remember that semicolon in place of the i in the title. The semicolon, as I recall, represents the partition between life and death, the idea that death doesn’t punctuate our lives with a final period, but instead functions as a bridge between here and there. W;t inspired me to structure this poem without periods, to make it one long, interconnected sentence, just as a tree’s branches are connected to its roots.
about the writer
Brian Wallace Baker is a poet and essayist from Erda, Utah, who holds an MFA from Western Kentucky University. His writing has appeared in Little Patuxent Review, River Teeth’s Beautiful Things column, Split Lip Magazine, Whale Road Review, and elsewhere. You can find him on Twitter @bbrianwallace.