I gave you a song about those two trees over there.
Surviving
just beyond their precarious adolescence,
Soaring to
see beyond our crumbling buildings.
And I told
you a limb had splintered on one tree
While the
other grew strong and proud.
I told you
that I stood there and watched it happen.
Though I
did not tell you the rest.
Restrained
by the form, I was short of time
To tell
you about the moments I spent watching.
Moments,
and perhaps even hours -
Time spent
on important matters of soul.
Hands on
my hips and I surveyed nature.
(Nature is
often my poetic subject, and by that I am most surprised).
Looking to
juice meaning from the mundane.
I stepped
out of my shelter and breathed the succulent air.
Those two
oaks opening the leaves of their pages
And
unraveling timeless theology.
I read the icons to the ceiling of their vaunted vault.
The
vengeful sky roiled with porphyric percolations.
Their dark
bloated billows eviscerated themselves
And
pummeled the earth with sheets of damaging and deifying water.
I stood
motionless, planted as the trees,
A reader
of their lessons and revelations.
Washed by
the deluge and ignorant of the thunder crash,
I planted
myself in obedience to the bucolic cathedrals’ example.
The width
and breadth of the storm hurtled west to east
Though I
stayed in my place to see what would be.
Remaining
steadfast until the shower ceased, I spied a new world out there.
The world
had the two oaks as their regnant lords.
Under
their protective span remains (even now) a bistro table.
One chair
remains as it was before the winds.
The other
toppled on its back with no agency of its own.
And my
time of contemplation was completed.
Returning
to the menial tasks of occupation
The second
chair remains defeated for another contemplative surviving another storm.
