An Accounting
We lost enough trees
planet-wide last year
to occupy New Zealand.
But how many of those
were beloved?
How does that count out?
How many had been
adopted & planted & raised
like a member of the family?
How many were gingkos
that started out as a whip
and grew into a
great
gangly
adolescent
annoying the power lines
as it shot up?
How many were lonely Damson plums
on a college campus
full of Bradford pears?
I planted my son’s placenta
under a Grimes Golden apple.
Tell me how to count that.
Please.
If
you
could.
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I think many have personal stories of seeds and saplings that they have planted, then watch grow. Unlike kids, trees are pretty predictable.
I remember going with my Dad into the fields behind are new house and pulling up a sapling that might havery been a quarter inch thick. We put it in the back yard at the corner of the house.
We don’t live there any longer, but when I visit and drive by the old house, I can see this huge tree in back of the house.
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You and your father and that tree are a whole thing, together, unaccountably . Now I am part of that, us four. That may be the only accounting that matters–us.