#nursery tree

[photozoi]

Autumn teaches us that it is ok to let go and let be.

[masatoshimori]

生きること <to live>

[squatchtography]

Nisqually Wildlife Refuge, Squatchtography

[thebittercripple]

Nursery Tree

He asks me why I am afraid and I wonder how to explain muddied palms and bloodied knees I've so often tracked inside.

I wonder how to speak unspoken seeds, how to pull them up from my stomach, how to untangle them from roots I've grown since I've been kneeling in this garden.

I wonder if he is actually listening, or simply waiting like the crows to speak. 

He asks me why I am afraid and I don't say it is because they do not understand.

I don't show him river stunted and tell him he is dam and damned.

I don't lead him to tree, don't put axe in his hand, don't guide his felling blows. I don't ask if he heard the forest's plea.

I don't show him sagging roof and call him rising storm, don't lay village at his feet and rain landslide from his shoulders, don't fold his hand into fist and ask him where it will find its home.

I don't tell him it is because they do not understand.

He asks me why I am afraid and I can't speak past the boughs in my throat.

Where does one start? With branches peeled of bark, leaves fallen skeletal on paths, roots pulled from soil - still hosting new life in their decay?

I can't ask him why life always falls to the fallen, why this death always ends in rebirth, why his narrative always demands yet more sacrifice.

I want to trace other stories into his skin, want to believe they would mean anything to him. 

Would they mean anything to him?

Or would he know them only as far off and distant, tree crown unreachable and so, unknowable?

Why does he have to touch it to know its awe and the pain of its ending? Why does he not feel the burn as his own? Has no one built pyres from his brethren?

I want to trust his questions, want to show him husks of trunks once majestic now rotted, gutted, want to know he will feel it deep in his belly, deep in his bones.

I don't know that he can.

I don't know that his hands felt the soil before it was soaked with blood, don't know that he ever pulled himself to sit in foliage once thick and dark, now more light than leaf.

I don't know that he ever found refuge in the embrace of rough arms brushed with moss.

I don't know that he can understand the grief that comes with rebuilding and knowing there is no end in sight.

[montaphotoblr]

Baby Douglas fir tree and huckleberry on top of a 500 year, 25 foot high, old stump       February, 2017

[nahalpars-blog]

Nursery tree pars

[nahalpars-blog]

Nursery tree pars

Nursery tree pars