My big black walnut tree is gone--the storm took it.
The stump is something like the white skin
where a ring recently was.
I'd like to have a funeral procession
but I lack coffin, instruments, mourners.
I would like to dance for my lost companion, but am denied.
Being old is like being a kid again, in the worst way.
I nag:
Watch your step
don't fall
careful with that
don't drop it.
I goggle at the world and the thousand things I cannot do.
My mulberry tree was thirty feet tall.
Now it sends up suckers, keen to be what it was, again.
I can reach out my hand and touch the top.
Watch where the root cracked the walk.
Look where you're walking don't trip
better sit,
crack your knees
catch your breath.
I'm the same inside, what happened to this flesh, this life?
Like the mulberry, it was cut down.
Like the back walnut--the storm took it.
I feel every line of this poem. The stump looking like the white skin where a ring once was is brilliant. Being like a kid again in the worst way, nagging ourselves to be careful - oh yes. But at least we are still writing poems. Remember when i was a nutcase writing poems about the climate crisis? And now the planet is burning. I am so frustrated. And grieving.
ReplyDeleteBeautifully said by an aching heart, sadly relatable.by all who know what "being old" is. The miracle is, your words are supple and limber like the body is not, standing tall and true.
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