Treebark

Its only when you have written them,
only when you have consigned them to time
like a four or five letter word uttered artlessly
or a spicule of your spit
that the wind blows away into the night
of the road behind your motorcycle

Its only after putting the distance
of your years in between
that you know, your poems were preoccupations
a vain affair with words, even.
The earth has wrinkled, treebark has aged
while you were outgrowing them.