Is there anything but darkness
inside the linden tree
turned maternal doll?
Seems like a question for quantum,
but my ancestors had their own systems
for physics. They involved sifting
a palmful of soil
to count corn poppy seeds
against the shape of afternoon
arcing through the kitchen window,
kinetics of moths and nettles.
Dig down to the thirtieth doll,
thirty-third, eleven dresses ago
in my family rhizosphere,
and find a carving of Veles,
the wet and wooly god
of earth, death, and cattle.
My grandmother swears
he became St. Basil,
the same way she
became my namesake and father
when Dad wouldn’t claim me.
Where there’s need,
there’s transformation,
piecemeal and permanent
as decay. The linden tree,
sacred back in the motherland,
produces perfect flowers,
meaning bisexual—
and who’s to argue with the botanists?
Sometimes I wish I could
peel myself from myself
without discarding the shell.