A Strip of Woods at the Back of the Mind Poem by Alexandria Peary

Glued-on trees alternating with
strips of bricks and little pieces of song
taped up everywhere as green and pink diamonds

in a woods in a box when the room of the mind
has an easy chair and 3 large trees.
A 3-sided woods with a divan at the back,

an argyle of bird song on top
of a syncopation of stapled trees,
concrete strips and birches tacked up

for reflection, digression, analysis
if the room in the mind means
3 large people conferring in a box of woods

with a love seat out front.
Bands of fluorescence and poplar
and a tempo of tacked-up trees

a needlepoint of bird song, home-sweet-home,
where a sapling on an end table is lit
stage right beside the wicker chair

as well as the leather chair in the boxed woods.
A gray-haired woman sits on the floor
to read stacks of old journals out of a crate,

a flaxen girl in a Scotch-plaid holiday dress
who rolls in stage left.
Pulses of gold and lamé trees in French

and a disco ball in the boxed-in woods,
if the many-roomed mind comes with a futon.
The off-kilter, out-of-sync,

the irregular pace of, the size 3 of, until

a (Do Not) diagonal across the mountain range
at the back of the mind, sound-split poles, stubs
but glued-on, syncopation, many stapled, love lit:

one by one, the leaves again taped up.