I want to be a tree
Where the best thing you can be is old.
Where staying upright amidst all the things
That never stop moving,
Or changing,
Or fighting,
Or searching,
Or killing themselves,
Or saving for later,
Or leaving, for one reason or another,
Is enough
To draw in an onlooker who says:
“Wow, what an old tree.”
And they are amazed, for a moment.
Just think of what has occurred
In the time this tree has stood.
A terrible war,
A wild storm,
A great voyage across the sea,
The birth of your grandmother, and hers before that,
A million weddings, and as many divorces,
The death of a language,
All the times you’ve changed your instagram username.
And here stood this tree
A sort of accomplishment, you think,
To have lived through all of that.
Much more so than the ones that have since fallen,
That have been struck down,
To forge battle weapons,
Or storm cellars,
Or the mast of a ship that’s seen both sides of the Atlantic.
Instead, this one has managed to stand.
To continue to exist.
A home to one thing, a feast to another,
A spectacle to you.
Because to continue to exist,
Content and sturdy,
In rejection of all the dispensed purposes
That can be chosen for you,
Is much harder.