especially yours

 

 

It's true.

Trees enjoy the company of other trees.

And for our lives, each second brings another kind of adventure.

When a tree dies, like us I imagine,

there's no good answer. Just a midnight's

disbelief; prayers and worship,

the blank half-smiles of the undertakers.

 

As children, fortunately we had heard

the stories of Bunce Island

when we were closer to the beginning

and far more militant. Now

death sends us walking,

walking

 

thru what the Creek called 'winged elms'

or hemlock, if branches can be at all sorryful.

That is if you can find those the wooly adelgid hadn't

plundered, allowing their fat ovisacs

to swell in the dormant bark.

 

After that, four to ten years, thats all they get.

I had an aunt who the doctors gave just four weeks

as she laid crumbling,

deciduous in the hospice room.

When I visited her, she rose straight up

as if she  saw a cloud

 

which I think she had seen. The cloud of

tree-born tears. The cloud of goshawk hymnals.

The obit cloud of how she fought so hard

for that painless rise like a spire,

 

good ending.

Reviews

[Emily B]

i was with my mother-in-law in those final hours and minutes, it was a gift beyond measure, walking her to that last quiet breath

i've been thinking that i want to grow up to be a tall tree, with the sun on my trunk, and leaves so green they glisten, i want to be up there with the clouds

[emmajoy]

There's a 'feel' about this writing, as if a search is underway, a likening of man to his environment, perhaps, the ancient ways, the rightness of old thought or maybe, fantasy or surrealism .. is certainly worth reading over and over,

'.. .. walking ~~ thru what the Creek called 'winged elms' ~~ or hemlock, if branches can be at all sorryful. '