~A man travels
from Mindanao to Kyushu and says his inner geography
is enlarged by each new place.
Is it?
Might he not grow more by staring for twenty-four hours
at a single pine needle?
—Arthur Sze, "Parallax", Gift of Tongues
Trees!
written March 22nd, 2021
I know the answer
to the question posed above
is of course the single pine needle
but I am tired of this pine needle
day after day, year after year
this same pine needle.
I am sure if my heart opened enough
this pine needle would teach me the answer
to the question I can't think of
that would make everything ok
but I want to see other trees!
I want to see trees I never imagined
armies of them marching over hills
and also the lone banyan tree in the desert in India.
I want to see the first tree after crossing the ocean
and the last tree before the tundra.
I want to see the Tree of the Year!
every one that is still alive!
and mourn the ones that don't exist anymore.
I want to see the 5000 year old bristlecone pines in California
and visit the seedling I planted in grade school in our backyard.
I want to see the tree of life Yggdrasill
and Anne Frank's chestnut tree in Amsterdam.
I want to see every tree
growing along every fence-line
on every field men have ever plowed.
Only then, maybe, will I be satisfied to return to
this same pine needle.
I have a thing for trees! The European Tree of the Year is a real contest! There's a popularity contest I can get behind. Yggdrasil is a mythological tree, but that was sort of the point, to never get back to that same pine needle lol.
The banyan tree mentioned in the poem is a specific tree I remember seeing on a school grounds when I was an exchange student in India.
I grew up in the Midwestern United States, so those trees along fence lines are very familiar. Those are the trees I grew up with. Stubborn, sneaky trees placed just right to not be plowed under. And yes, I chose to have men plowing the fields. Historically that's how it was in my family and in families around us.
I obsess about punctuation, and ultimately just hope that people will read it in their own voice, taking breaks where make sense for them.