“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.
I like this.