Lacuna

Played around with form on this one and made it a concrete poem, one whose shape speaks to the poem as much as the words do.

It’s as though you have always been                    there

Right              there, in a sturdy log cabin

To the left of my heart

Surrounded by trees, a battalion of rigid

Lodgepoles twenty-one-gunning the morning fog

Me, as I stumble through the    d a y s  to  y   e    a     r      s

Sidestepping brush and crouching under limbs

I know you are there, but only in dreaming

Only subconsciously, your cabin amid the trees

I expect you are as wary as me

Woods hold wolves and bears and things

Things you are no more equipped for than I

But you are brave, in your cabin in the trees

 You note each  awkward  step I take

You smolder out the cabin window

You glower at each man I meet

Sub-par,           mediocre,          trivial,            mundane

This heart has been claimed, you loudly say

A cabin has already been built on this spot

And I must merely                          find                 it

I feel you there from time to time

You crowd my heart and give me pause

And sometimes, when a tree falls,

The left side of my chest aches