Branches
A haiku story about connections
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Built just like a tree
Arms and legs from a trunk shoot
Like branches and roots
Branches stretching out
Bony hands and fingertips
Slender, knuckled twigs
Hands flat against grass
Pressing back on straightened arms
And raised shoulder blades
Tension highlighting
Creases between arm muscles
Matching contoured bark
Kneecaps and gnarled knots
Protrude perpendicular
On my plane of sight
Still fishing for more
Similitude, still scanning,
Studying each part
What about those leaves?
Bushy, asymmetrical
Like my curly hair
The same gust of wind
Rustles them both, waving at
Each other like friends
Growing more each year
Until their seasonal trims
Fall around their feet
How ‘bout parts unseen?
Vascular pipes up and down
That bark-crusted core
Must look something like—
I shift my sitting posture,
Arms now hugging legs—
This network of veins
I see pressed against thin skin
In the sun’s spotlight
Veins I see in me
But not the tree; I wonder
About the converse
The branches in me
Critical though they might be
That my eyes can’t see
If not for mirrors
My eyes couldn’t see their own
Thin crimson branches
Ancient dissectors:
By which internal branches
Were they most surprised?
Who could have ignored
The close resemblance between
Lung and tree branches?
Each day we see one
And not the other; gone is
That sense of wonder
Those lungs of the Earth
Breathing through branches so stiff
They might appear dead
Or is this all just
My wandering brain making
Connections for fun?
From a simple seed
Analytical branches
Leading to dead ends
Can’t a tree just be
A tree, here long before me
And long after, too?
Can’t I just be me
Enjoying a midday break
To just sit and be?
Evidently not;
Why’s it still so difficult
After much practice?
Anticipating
At every single moment
The next thing to do
Chasing tomorrow
Until nothing can be done
But rest below trees
Slumbering beneath
Their skeletal canopies
For eternity
They go on and on
And they do nothing at all,
Though they’re built like me
If they could see me
I’d be doing nothing, too,
From an outside view
Maybe they’re busy
Maybe they’re tired and stressed
But I just can’t see
Maybe they’re confused
Maybe they don’t know which way
They should be growing
Thirty-one years in
Still looking to trees for help
Not finding answers
Just getting more lost
In that network of branches
‘Til it’s time to leave
Thirty-three verses
I sit and compose, although
I can’t tell what for
When I sit with you
There are no such questions, though
There’s no you or me
There’s no me or tree
There are words, but they connect
Us more seamlessly
And it seems right now
Eternity might be found
Somewhere above ground
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Words may form connections, but no more seamlessly than any other form of interaction/intermingling which is the the unseemly problem of the so-called seamless blend of seeming between being and becoming like a tree that is a seed that makes more seeds and a me that doesn’t see/saw/sense eternity unless my roots can feel the flutter of wings behind the leaves that make the shadows dance across the waving grass that would tangle itself into a jungle if I weren’t compelled to mow.