Man is the Tree that Walks

Four-week old chicks, learning to roost.

***

The Telling that Changes Everything XXI.

July 15, 2012

Man is the tree that walks.–Light Food 27 (1989)

For Gene, whose mosaic blue tree fed this poem.

***

It is my hands that feed: the chicks and hens,

my children and grandchildren, my friends,

myself; my hands that loosen the new raspberries

and hunt the last of the blueberries.  My hands

wash the dishes, scrub the kitchen floor,

shovel pine shavings into the chicks’ room;

dig, plant, grab the huge grass clumps and

jerk them free, then pound them against the

ground to loosen the earth caught in their

roots.  My hand moves this pen across

the page.  Once my hands held babies,

fed, stroked, changed diapers, rocked,

burped, tickled.  My hands tell the story

of the tree I am.  I, too, have my seasons,

sometimes bereft: where are my leaves?

What happened to my fruit?  But in this

season of my life, three-quarters lived,

I bloom and make fruit as never before.

You might not find me easily.  I live

on the back wall of a garage in a modest

Durham neighborhood.  The many phases

and seasons of my life are implied but

not in focus here.  Here I live a joy as blue

as a serene lake where the current runs

deep but doesn’t ripple the surface, and

the sky penetrates the water it sees below.

I still work hard.  You will see my limbs 

in motion, a form of dance if you pay

close attention.  You didn’t expect to see

new buds or fully ripe fruit?  Both are

possible when a tree is planted where

it has always longed to be, a home that,

if not permanent on earth, is, in some

sense, eternal, despite, or maybe because

of so much change, in our past, our

present, and well into future time.  Hold

in your mind this vison of a blue tree, in

dance ecstatic, needing no name or

century.  You’ll remember the hands.