treeish

“i think that i shall never see / a poem as lovely as a tree.” — joyce kilmer

“i should rather like to be a tree myself,” i’ve often thought,

gazing up the shocking white of a sycamore’s trunk into

the gold-fleck leaves shimmering against a sky of heart-stopping blue.

being an occasionally practical dreamer, i realize

treedom is not always tea and roses

(after all, i don’t suppose trees usually drink tea —

but imagine the sap-drunk blazing maples!)

and gentle breezes turn into roaring winds

that amputate branches and shake loose leaves.

i was told that trees are at a disadvantage

since they lack the mobility of legs

and that it would be painful

to have squirrels racing up and down,

over and around oneself constantly.

the realist in me admits

that trees were created trees

and people as people for a reason,

so in light of literalism it is a blessing

we do not have an army

of earth-bound, arboreal sentient beings

on our hands waiting to wake up.

but we are a tree, to be metaphorical.

we’re a foreign shoot grafted onto precious heirloom stock

and given life through a root we did not grow.

i am a branch, and you are a branch,

bound together inextricably in the Savior-Creator.