For the Man Finding a Tree Growing in His Lung

A Poem by Kherry McKay

A strange story about the body and nature.

For the Man Finding a Tree Growing in His Lung

For Artyom Sidorkin

He was scared it was cancer.
Now, he’s shocked the Earth has blessed him
with a Tall Rusian Fir.
We are soil, Earth to support life’s web.
Let no one say we are divorced from nature -
love, Tao, breath, plantings, beginnings:
intrinsic to us all. The man
swallowed a small seed. It was like falling in love,
sighing in, sacred incense
into the body through inhalation.

Life had wanted to be worshiped like a particle,
complex carbon with a strong will.
Artyom Sidorkin came to a hospital
in the city of in Izhevsk in Central Russia.
Surgeons thought they were hallucinating.
A two-inch fir happily grew inside him,
having found dirt, lifeblood, spirit.
Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust:
We’ll all be supporting a tree-life at some point.
Artyom only started early.

We are glad you’re O.K., Artyom.
Come to America and I will buy you a drink
to celebrate the proliferation of unknowing
greenery and how it finds kindred spirits,
its life-lovers, its unconscious hosts.

Sorry, you were hurt.
You will be the celebrity of my National
Arbor Day.
Thank you for cherishing
something the Earth has worked on
for hundreds of millions of years.
You were not the first, I think,
to have harbored a tree.

The Earth has surprises, and you’re O.K.!

Take a look at more of Kherry McKay's writing in the Cafe!