Paulann Petersen

TO MY COFFIN-TREE

You will have taken a century or so to grow 
a cavity in your trunk large enough to house
a dead woman tall and broad as me.
You will have given yourself 
over to cleave and groan, sundered 
yourself open, the rift in you
gaining moreso and moreso until it can
swallow me whole.

I’m near ready to rest
inside you, willing to let
ensuing seasons close over me
with scales of cambium and bark.

Take me in
as part of your heartwood.

Be my own 
numen of in-doing.
Do me in.

Paulann Petersen was Oregon Poet Laureate from 2010 to 2014. She has seven full-length poetry collections, most recently One Small Sun from Salmon Press of Ireland. Her poems have appeared in a number of journals and anthologies, including Poetry, The New Republic, Catamaran, and Prairie Schooner. The Latvian composer Eriks Esenvalds chose one of her poems as the lyric for a new choral composition that’s now part of the repertoire of the Choir at Trinity College, Cambridge.