Companion Tree *

Elder-shadow.

Temple shelter.

Guesthouse of airflow

through leaves.

I am an intuition of being,

rooted in your presence with 

a felt sense of unclosable life

tangled in a garland of stars

that hold the shape of you,

anchored in a skin of rain-slicked

moss that holds the shape of you.

It wasn’t your job to let beauty

thicken and ascend.

But you did it anyway.

I wasn’t your job to let birds and

children sleep beneath your dome.

But you did it anyway.

Your job was simply to be alive,

and because you did it, 

my life holds the shape of you

in an uneasy world.

* We said goodbye this week to an enormous oak tree---the wise, old king of our yard. Its massive branches barely produced any leaves this year. Even though it managed to survive last year’s hurricane force winds, it also started leaning more and more over our house. Its inevitable fall would have been catastrophic. An arborist told us that it would be lucky to make it until spring, so we scheduled it to be cut down. Even though it was dying and its removal was a necessity, having to participate in the destruction of something you love is a kind of wound that’s reserved for our hardest days.