The Significance Of Trees

I have grown tolerant of things I don't understand, those that can't teach me. To accept that knowledge is religion and religion is knowledge is to concede to defeat. The circleround dog-tail chase that the yellow dog performs on his own tail. Left to our own devices our spines would snap by age twenty-seven, or age twenty-nine if prone to sleeping late. And we chase and we chase and we

STOP

our backs broken, our bodies pulled toward one side of the universe. Where OUR stars burn righteously longer and brighter. Where THEIR stars dare to glow like flickering tealights set upon a distant windowsill in a cabin in the woods where nobody goes. Children in tent cities burn the books that seep absolution by osmosis through your clutching grasp. Through your shaking, empty hands. There is no absolution save for giving away your favorite book; teaching a shivering 5-year-old with sunken eyes how to light his first match.

Bowed heads see

NOTHING

but a book, hands, or feet.

God only knows what I am. I am a triangle of disbelief, a theological malformation, a smudge on this white paper. If I am all that I'm not I'm also all that I am and I am not

OK

with the belligerency of excess. Or the sound a gavel makes in a closed court. I believe in the woods. I believe in the sky above it and the tree that grants permission for the moss to hold on to it for

DEAR LIFE

on its north-facing trunk, not caring, not knowing, how it appears or why, because it doesn't need to know. I know trees bend in the wind to a force unseen. I have studied the patient strength of seedlings. They do not bend. They live or they

DIE

according to chance...luck? The singular strength of an embryonic root? They have not lived long enough to have acquired a mid-section weakened by bloat or the illusion of longevity. Perhaps when one dies, it's meant to be tilled back into the soil. Or to lay stiffened and lifeless where it fell; to warn other errant seeds where not to land. Am I to bear witness that the sturdiest of trees bore just one poisoned apple? Not one seed landed, took hold, and became overjoyed? Not one seed fell from a gaping, gasping mouth? Not

ONE SEED

that called Earth its mother?

There is a clearing nearby that draws fawns to its edge. Moss-covered men with huts made of broken branches and dry leaves crouch. They wait. Armfulls of apples are laid out in the shape of a cross. And there is

SALT

not of this earth. Salt in big blocks. Blocks not formed by the acquiescence of the oceans, the complicity of the moon, or an omnipotent shake of-the-wrist. Blocks that could build great cities. And there are apples

EVERYWHERE

Reviews

[Emily B]

So lovely to read your words.

[Ken Simm.]

This is an important write and I too agree with it in its empathy and trueness. Beautifully written. And looking at the age of previous review it is as relevant or perhaps more so today.

[roarke]

mmm, great conversation. I concur. We are in accord.