Tuesday, September 1, 2020

Once the Great Cedar

 

Hear live first rendition here

Once the teenage tree

Reaching out,

Stretching its branches,

Full of succulent leaves.

A host for nesting birds

On their way to other branches,

in a cacophony of cicadas.

And insects, crawling,

Being hunted by birds and other insects. 

Caterpillars engorging themselves in leaves,

Wrapped in cocoons and falling to the ground

to metamorphose into moths, butterflies.

This canopy of dense deep green

Attracting dwellers underneath

In need of rest,

 In need of shade on sunny days.

Through seasons of thickening trunk,

Withstanding wind and rain, and thunderbolts,

Gather into a forest,

Seeding soil carried in brooks,

Around a village through its tributaries.  

Until the darkness past shooting stars

Reaches an apex of life,

Strained by obsessions,

Depleted of its qualities,

Fissures forming,

Cracks splitting it open

As sap, harvested, drizzles down its bark

Into  hollowed termite housing,

Till branches, brittle,

Begin to flail in frail health,

Frozen and abandoned through too many winters.

A last fall foliage pleads to onlookers:

“See me for the last time!”

Alas, naked and grotesque,

But a holy tree to the elders

That shared the journey

From childhood looking upward,

To evenly aroused wisdom of longevity,

When countable branches remain,

And roots become strained,

Until the last cone bursts open,

In flames,

Of inter-generational pain.


September 1, 2020

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Copyright © 2020 by David Barry Temple. All rights reserved 


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