For a Dryad by Jacqueline West

At nineteen you were a birch tree.

Silver and straight, fresh leaves shivering,

paper-thin skin curled around every wound.

By twenty-five you’d turned into a pine,

swishing your rich greens, pretending

you knew how to stay alive

whatever winter deeps might come.

At forty you became a maple,

the flame of change red-gold in your arms,

blood tapped and glinting, your heart a wet gift.

Once you thought you’d grow into a willow:

you’d wear grief like silks, learn how to dance—

or maybe you’d spend a stint in an orchard,

limbs dragged to the ground with fruit, drunken bees.

But now you think you’d rather be smaller.

Something a god’s hungry eyes won’t see.

Now, you think, you’d rather be stone.