The Tree

The Tree

I kneel by the redwood cutting basal roots,

taunt slivers that shoot up from the base,

and think how this tree is always reproducing.

And if I’d birthed that child, the last, or the one before,

they’d be grown now, cast off from the shore

of my mothering. There’s an odd comfort

in knowing my children would have left me eventually.

No matter. What I’ve held these many years

in my body, is a half-used organ—

a heart that dispenses just enough blood to survive.

This tree lived before the fox and the butterfly,

before Eve and the empire of building,

each tendril greenlit with the fires of spring.

They say the redwood quivers with embryonic tissue,

will keep making more of itself—

masterful and entirely reckless.

—Ploughshares, Vol. 27, No. 1