Inscription

Canal du Midi, France Arcades of plane trees arc Aves above the canal. I know they are not a choir. I know they are not Kabuki, tusk, knuckle, or the swords and flames St. Joan rode into, though it’s true I think of them as these, and as the sky’s deep pockets of snow, white keys, mammoth teeth. It is my way and my need: mes amours, sycamores. My emblems on a crest, gallery of visible ghosts. Mostly I love the light they hold inside, the all-too-much and aged toujours of them, their airborne electricities. Who’s to explain affinities like these? Two seas were joined this way in 1681, sparing sailors from piracy and storms. In the 1830s, planes were planted on its banks to protect vacationers from sun. Now a careless tourist nicks a tree with rope and spreads disease that will kill them all.Ceratocystis platani, traced to munitions boxes brought by World War II GIs. 42,000 must be felled and burned to save, scientists hope, the remaining planes, cousin to our sycamore, that is the wood that made the box that held the fungus riding in the waters of the canal. Measures have been taken. The road to hell, etc. St. Joan, finally, was burned to death for the cross- dressing; Kabuki theaters incinerated by soldiers for their drag shows and wartime sympathies. Sorrow. Desire. There are so many auto fatalities on plane-lined streets here, the French joke about why the tree crossed the road. They burn the hollows out sometimes. Inscribe vaginal lips around the gashes in swaths of hot pink paint. What we leave behind and what is left of us are related questions. The graves in town are up to three centuries old. Some crypts, forged crosses, chipped wreaths of ceramic flowers. Earth gouged, trees felled, buildings razed, never mind the lives. In the new world, a fungus-resistant sycamore is bred to replace relatives destroyed at the canal. Measures taken. Like swapping out the burnt-out bulbs on a string of Christmas lights. So what if we are replaceable? Mostly I love how we burst the prisons of our skins and shine. Outside the cemetery, someone’s magic-markered a locked electrical box with the words Sexe Toyes. The plaques on the graves nearby are inscribed Souvenirs and Regrets. Which are, even in my language, polite ways of saying Done.