We Were Saplings

 

We Were Saplings

(“Some Sadducees, who say that there is no resurrection, came to {Jesus}.” Mark 12:18)

Have you seen the burn pile behind my house,
sheared limbs and deadened trunks tangled like
frozen snakes in the sun? We plan to burn each one
before the summer is over, but the rains have come with
mid-March clouds to the Pacific Northwest.

It is slow work and painful, bending to find the smallest kindling
to fan the steam and smoke into flame. The mini forest in
our front yard
is better for the deep cuts the chain saw left,
but my past pruning has left marks I am quick to hide.
I would rather they were burned and the coals dumped
over the side of the hill.

You cannot see me a year ago, a day ago, a second ago.
I no longer exist there.
But those ghosts that appear in the voices that remember,
and in my mind full of distemper have painted the past
in clearer ink than the buds that are the beginning of spring.

Music plays every day while I write. Most are the soundtrack
of high school love: Cat Stevens, Rod Stewart, Carole King and
James Taylor. And Don Irwin always sang “Build Me Up, Buttercup”
when we walked home from middle school. We were saplings
and moved easily through the southern California seasons.

But now my trunk is harsher, the gray limbs stiffer, while the remnants
of trees older than me are seasoned next to the shed. Today the sun
shines
while my mind rehearses talks that lasted forever when
we thought we had forever to live. And I have not talked to
many of them for two-thirds of my life now. So where do I
live? I am not afraid to die; I am sure that I exist here and
will and do exist just beyond the crystal veil. What occupies
my mind
today
is the way friends, lovers, sisters, brothers, all seemed effortless.

I am not deceived by the rosiness of time. But today as I view
the years so far ago
I miss the simplicity of firelight, dancing on living room rugs,
unabashed hugs, and playing the same LP over and over again
because Tapestry was just
that
good.