The Gift

Danny was at soccer,
Mom was with the other moms.
Where does that leave me?

So I kept to me, in a little gazebo, at a quiet corner of Dan's soccer park.
Nobody was there.
Just me, and a few potted plants.
Well, there was someone else.

It was a tree, not too high,
Maybe a few feet taller than I,
And it was laughing,
Singing something in the manner of all other trees.

One trunk, many branched,
One branch, many-leaved,
One leaf, and there were many holes.

The little holes, like cold, clinking, circular, coins,
Gaping in and out of the leaves
Leaving only
Gossamer

Layers of dead plant-veins, still clinging like cobwebs

To the hole.

Smiling tree turned to me.
"Hello there, human lad."

And so we talked,
She in the sunlight, I in the shade.
We spoke of weather,
Which was about as important to trees as politics are to humans.

No, I tried not to stare at her
Large, clipped, cookie-cut leaves.
But she saw my furtive glimpses.

She smiled even bigger now.
She chuckled,
"Come here, human friend, and let me tell you all about them," said she.

So I came to the sunlight,
With the singing tree,
And she told me her tales,
In a voice like melody,
Speaking of older days and times.

She told me of the way
She had been planted
In the park
By an old, lonely lady
Who had no space to keep me.

And so she lived and loved her life,
Singing of the grass about me
And the wind on my leaves,
And the soil that was good,
"Something like a cozy blanket, as humans say," said she.

"Now I shall speak of my holes.
Alas, the pestilence came on me.
Little infidels crawling on my back and leafy arms, creeping ever nearer to my
Emeralds
And they ate them up.
Again and again.
And what can I do?"

I said nothing,
for a while,
And she was silent.

Then I asked her, "And yet, why do you yet sing and smile and laugh as you do?"
"Because my roots are in the soil, and my mind dwelling on He that Is," says she, "you know Him, don't you?"

I nodded.

She went on.

"And so I live. Not for long, not as a healthy tree, but a joyful one."

I looked at her, smiling politlely, not exactly sure still what to say.
She chuckled again.

"My mind can only dwell on Him.
He loves me, and yet,
He loves your kind, well, more.
That is your gift, Human-friend."

Her faded, grotesque braches danced in the wind.

"So use it."

She smiled and reclined.

And I wondered if I had been

dreaming.