Fagus sylvatica ‘Pendula’

Lying hymn-barren on the dirt floor, loopy 
in the leaflight, I thought I thought well of myself.
I smoked a cigarette beneath the weeping beech 
we called King Tree, dreamt 
a grove grown for coffinwood.
Pain journeyed from my stomach riding an armored horse.
Vines grew around my neck.
The world was worse wherever I was.

Copyright © 2022 by Chase Berggrun. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 8, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.

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“In the long and searching process of recovery from addiction, I find myself often turning back toward old memories (some fractious and dramatic; others, like this one, emblematic of the quieter experiences of quotidian drunkenness), aided by a polished magnifying lens. After the usual cringing, it’s so useful to be able to recognize the desperation that defined my daily life—the delusionality of ego, the neglect of my body—accurately and critically. It is a concrete and important thing to say: yes, this is what it was like, and what it is like no longer. It never has to be this way again.”
—Chase Berggrun