Weeping, burning, rotting trees
A poem that insisted I write it down at 3:40am
Lately I’ve been wondering if the Earth is grieving after each so called
“natural disaster”
The wildfires, the hurricanes, the earthquakes, and whatever else She does that
erupts a big big change that shatters life and renews it
I woke up from a dream of a tree
shaped like an elephant
She was burning and a young woman with long hair
was cutting a piece of her limb
for research to show what? I’m not sure
But I saw the tree elephant’s eyes and she was crying
And it was because she burned and could not save
her baby tree elephant
I wonder if that is all there is left to do
to Weep
It seems grief, so so so so SO much grief is
sitting inside each of us
And there is the urge among us instead to harden and toughen
and become mean
But I know in my bones that those who harm now
in the highest positions of power are really just filled with
so so so so SO much grief
for the lovelessness
and it is too much to bear and instead gets twisted and gnarled
like those knobby trees in front of my son’s preschool
6 of them that line the sidewalk and are carefully wrapped in a foot of
plastic with an orange sign that alerts us all that
they must be cut down
because they are sick and dying and could harm others
if they break and fall from that internal rot
I weep a surprising flood of tears when I learn that these trees must go
And so I ask us now
What Grief sits inside of us that needs to be spilled
that is at the core
because billionaires and power will come and go
but if we don’t grieve the loss of all that LOVE
we needed as kids
we only create harm again and again
The trees are burning
The trees rotting
They will fall
The mother can’t save her child
The trees are burning
Who is the tree?
It’s you
It’s them
It’s me