Archive
09/24/11 - (1)
Olive Branch
This frigid, wind-whipped early Saturday a.m., I'm intruded upon, my pristine privacy violated, By a stranger (a wiry little guy sporting goggles, A tattered green-and-white-checked lumber jacket, boots, Scandinavian blond hair and beard), Who, knocking on my kitchen door, Surprises the fright right out of me, As I sit at the table, naked, capturing ideas, on paper, Preparing to feed the day to my imagination.
I open the door, speak, through the screen, To likely the sole visitor I'll have, all week, Though visiting me certainly isn't his mission. He's a tree cutter, who's been summoned, By the cabin's landlord, To remove the foot-in-diameter, forty-foot-high white pine Growing beside the kitchen deck, Whose graceful, spaciously swaying boughs I've admired for the five years I've been staying here.
Believing it to be a victim of disease And having less than no say-so as to its destiny, All I can do is acquiesce to his message of doom And its subsequent shrill, dust-filled fury, Which mutilates, dismembers the beautiful, breathing tree; Indeed, the raucous chainsaw and shrieking maw Of the chipper attached to the cherry-picker truck Eventually force me to dress, Flee my retreat, seek refuge in the woods.
Three dislocated hours later, when I return, Quietude has usurped the tumult. The cabin is mine again; so is silence, But the tree isn't, Save for fifteen feet of its lichen-covered trunk, Bearing five six-foot limb-stubs, On one of which shivers a two-foot bough, Clutching a twig-cluster of green-needle sprigs — An olive branch it's desperately offering to death.
09/24/11 - (1)
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