Crack your skull and time stops
the stars whirl in front of my eyes

where was I?

In the upper lot, above the rockery.
I was walking fast, sunhat on my head, lowered over my eyes, thinking,
looking backward in my mind about the wonderful morning I’d had.
I was back in time, not far back in time, but not in the present

CRACK

My skull collided with the low branch of the mirabelle plum tree
and the stars whirled and everything stopped.

The pummeling plum we call it now.
The pummeling plum tree has been removed
but the bruise in my brain kept reminding me that life is shaky.
that all my thoughts can be scrambled by a tree.

When we went to visit Stanford University a month later,
I found a new hat for me, with one of the Stanford mottos:
“FEAR THE TREE” it says.
I laughed when I saw it.

Not so funny the time it took to heal
the brain would work and then get tired, remember, and then forget.
Thoughts would crack like a clock, like a stone, like ceramic.
The words came apart and floated on the grey sea of foam and blood.

It wasn’t serious, the doctor said.  Only a mild concussion.
But something was lost, wasn’t it?
For a time
Time was lost

The bruise didn’t show.
I looked the same, but there were days when I was dizzy
and days when everything was clear,
clicking orderly like the inner coils and gears of my grandmother’s faithful clock
ticking away on the mantelpiece,
saying:  hurry up, hurry up, hurry up
you don’t know how much time you’ve got
until the words fall quietly onto the ground
like leaves off the plum tree in September,
brown and sodden in the autumn rain,
forgetting themselves as they dissolve into mulch.

Crack on now
crack open the new notebooks, click open the pens, write as if your soul depended on it
today the herons stand along the shore fishing,
but the white-crowned sparrows have finished their love songs and raise their young.
the summer is passing

Crack open you heart and let the words pour out
speak them aloud, too, if you dare.

I love you.
And I forgive you.
But that wasn’t easy, you know.
It was a choice I made.