BORROWED WORDS
Adam to Eve, later in life,
after babel’s tower fell,
began his speech with borrowed words:
“Oh, my love!”
What world would I not give now
for that eternal, ancient fantasy:
“A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou!”
In the shade of Kunitz’ VERY TREE,
the gentle spark released beneath
lithe pressure of your palm
above my heart
which would break
its fragile net of bone to rest
that narrow distance
closer to your flesh.
Now distracted by quick thoughts
of two french words: “chair” for flesh and “peau” for skin.
The first implying something
more animal/essential; the second softer,
more sensual than elemental:
“chair de ma chair.”
“os de mon os.”
ossature de ma vie.
bone network, calcite frame.
White
white,
like bread,
like wine;
in my bones singing:
“sang de mon sang”
with each red cell
new marrow-minted.
Bonnie McClellan-Broussard 
This is very inspiring, Bonnie. Is Kunitz’ VERY TREE a reference to the testing-tree?
The Testing Tree is a beautiful poem, extremely powerful, but I there is another, very early poem by Kunitz on the Platonic notion of “Tree”
VERY TREE by Stanley Kunitz
Forget the tube of bark,
Alliterative leaves,
Tenacious like a hand
Gnarled rootage in the dark
Interior of land.
Bright incidental bird
Whose melody is fanned
Among the bundled sheaves,
Wild spool of the winding word,
Reject: and let there be
Only tree.
Earth’s absolute arithmetic
Of being is not in the flowering stick
Filled with the sperm of sun,
But in a figure seen
Behind our eyelids when we close
Slow petals of the brain
To match the nights repose.
Colors pour in and out:
Here is a timeless structure wrought
Like the candelabrum of pure thought,
Stripped of green root and leaf,
Getting no seed to sprout,
Yet lovely, lovely,
God’s Very Tree,
Form of whose intense inner life
Abstractly branches to attain
What glory, Tree, what pain?