a bleeding pine

1. covering

Who severed your limbs
I'll never know.

Nubs, like sad vacancy signs,
drip with old habit,
offering sap to branches
that were cut away.

Prosthetics would look forced
like an evergreen toupee:

one of these things
is not like the other,

evoking laughter and pity.

The scars you bear, though,
almost beg for something
to cover them,

to keep the secret
we all know;

to deny sight the truth.





2. the branch eye

I don't remember the cut--
just the echoing thud.

I looked up and saw
my dripping pine life,
sticky and clean and full.

I lie
among the rusted fallen,
the dead pine straw.

All of us
write love letters to
our old evergreen lives,

fighting the knife and gravity
for xylem and phloem,
wondering if we'll ever do anything

but die
and be dead.





3. under standing


You see things upside-down.

I need a tree like Peter's;
let the blood rush to my head
so I'll see things like You do.





4. the forest of no return

Leaky pine tree,
sing me hope
though your open knots:

There is a hand
that cuts and grafts
fallen limbs
with skilled, willing hands.

Planted firmly,
a waiting tree stands,
overflowing with sap,
evergreen life from open wounds,

full of home
and tomorrow.