I spent an entire Saturday
drawing trees on the backs
of my journals from when I
was a child. I decidedly started
with the roots; they would
begin transparent somewhere
in thin air then snake through
the dalmatian-spotted print.
It took everything I had to not
etch our initials into the pencil-
thin trunk. The smell of its pages
had me recalling the blooms from
the Japanese Cherry Blossoms
right outside of your window.
When we were younger, we
would find ourselves latched
to the sweeping limbs of the
oak trees in Lawrence Park.
When we got older, yet not
at all wiser, I used to search
your body for happiness beneath
the cypress behind my parents’
house. We would suck in the
air from the leaves and the
shade would, if but for a moment,
let us escape all responsibility.
You moved to the west coast.
Then, it just so happened, when
you turned 18, you got a tattoo of
a Douglas fir on your calf.
For your 21st birthday, another
man took you to the Redwood
forest where you sipped strawberry
moonshine from a mason jar.
There was a time when we could
build a forest out of only two trees
and it was dense enough to
blur out the rest of the world.
But now as I stand in the middle
of our field now occupied by
dirty apartment buildings, I
wonder how you two weather
the seasons, how you hold on,
how you traded a cedar tree
for a palm, if I would count
the rings around your heart,
have you grown since I’ve
seen and held you last, and was
it entirely my fault that our roots
were never quite deep enough?

04/16/2014

Posted on 04/16/2014
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