This Tree

from the 2012 Three Twelve album, something begun

w&m © 2010 David M. Glasgow (ASCAP)

Come sit for a while
where you can’t quite see the sky.
Find a place on the ground
amid the leaves and the sounds of living.

Calloused roots shape the soil.
Burning sunlight is foiled
into cool, mottled green.
And this sturdy trunk leans
against forces not seen in your lifetime.

These branches have grown
without blooms of their own,
but the earth in their care
shelters saplings that dare outgrow them,

and others who fall
with no challenge at all.
But the fallen have worth
as their ghosts feed the earth
and in falling go forth
to protect other births and seedlings.

Long ago, this tree stood alone
on a hill, scarred by rain and parched by sun.
But these roots held their ground until the forest grew around.
And when that trial was done, something had begun:
this tree had a home.

Now, someday, this tree
will exhaust its time to be,
and the forest will find
that the giant has dried and brittled.

And slowly the soil
will reclaim the years of toil
that this tree took to stand,
to prepare fertile land for growing.

And even the frame
of this tree will not remain
as its bark turns to dust,
and its knotted flesh must be repurposed.

But here where it stood
grows a thicket of wood:
many lives from the one,
reaching high toward the sun,
though the why they can is forgotten.

Long ago, one tree stood alone
on a hill, scarred by rain and parched by sun.
But its roots held their ground
until the forest grew around.
And when that trial was done,
something had been won.
That tree made a home.