It’s getting hard for me to remember

what it was like before I was a tree. 
What the news reports don’t tell you is how

this all started as a little pain

between my legs. A small throb.
I thought it was just a case of blue balls. At first

the doctors called the dark fractals in the sonogram

mineral deposits, suggesting the sea. 
They didn’t mean whole swift swarms of fish.

Imagine a man like me

with no city to abandon or look back at—
and suddenly becoming salt.

I should have known:

I have always loved to dig my toes 
into the mud. I’ve always marvelled

at the downing of power lines

and the slow breaking 
of the local roads and walks. Times

I’ve been kissed and told I reek

of black cherry and mulch.
Soon after the groin aches started,

I took my love to the sakura festival 
and stood under the orchard rows

and could not stop staring up

into a couple million crumpled
bloodied buds, as if some blunt thing

full of spring had bashed them open

one by one into this gangbuster chorus. 
What a sky to gaze into—a hallelujah

of tattered tongues.  Brutal, I tell you. Hell, 
I got no clue when I’m supposed to

break into blossom. But when I do,

I hope there’s music playing
and lovers lying in a lanky tangle

beside me. I promise to stand absolutely still

and forget what it was like  
to have spent my entire life walking around

as if I’d ever been just a man.