We believe a big tree will live forever, though we see the lie.

We have known young trees and watched them die of drought.

We have seen the winds take out branches, even topple

whole trees, tall pines or sturdy oaks, their trunks snapped

like matchsticks or their root balls torn up from soggy ground,

their roots left dangling in the air, clinging to a layer of dirt.

 

I have seen iris bloom sideways from the ground around

a hackberry’s massive clump of roots, hanging on above

a deep hole the size of a grave, excavated by tornado.

I have seen a tall pecan come crashing down and tear

the roof off a neighbor’s house or a live oak level the 

back bedroom another neighbor ran from minutes before.

 

Ice will take down huge limbs in winter, beetles drill holes 

to suck the sap and poison the pine’s life blood. There is ample

evidence that trees are mortal, yet standing under the big maple,

it was easy to believe it would always be there, until now

when we see its days are numbered: the hollows in its trunk

may be filled, or it may be taken down to save the house.

 

But we see it could never live forever, as my mother

reminds me that we never know from day to day the span

of our own lives, and I feel like Gilgamesh, after the death

of his great friend, when Utnapishtim, the survivor of the flood,

reveals the gods established death and life, yet humans cannot 

know the days of death. For how long do we build a house,

 

for how long can we sign a lease or raise a child? Every day

we climb that tree. Every day could be its last, and yet we live

as if it isn’t. My father died suddenly when his heart gave out;

my sister, after seven years of cancer. Two gashes in this trunk. 

My mother has lost two sisters, a brother, and countless friends

and neighbors, yet she rises every morning to tend her tree.