When climbing in the pines
You must beware of oozing sap-
Many are they who've stepped in it
And never did come back.
We find them later in the trees,
Caught in their sticky trap,
With "Tell them all I loved them,"
Pinned Upon their pack.
* * *
He found her by moonlight. She was sleeping in the pines as those of the Burlick faith do. He desired her for his wife, but he knew that she would never have him. She had made that plain. As she slept, he cut a wound in the bark above her head and silently watched as the sap oozed and mixed with her hair. When she woke she would be trapped, and he would "happen" upon her and be the hero. He would offer to cut her free in return for her hand in marriage...and if she would not- then the birds could have her. Aye, the birds, with their beady merciless eyes, would convince her to marry him.
* * *
Have you ever stood on a moon-dappled limb?
Up near the top where the trunk tapers slim?
Where you cling to the bark with a white-knuckle grip
As it pitches and rolls like the deck of a ship?
Have you ever slept in the riotous trees?
Have you been rocked to sleep by the force of the breeze?
Have you laid out your roll in the quiet recess
Of a woodpecker's hole or an old robin's nest?
Have you ever sat where the mourning dove grieves?
Looked out on a view that's framed by the leaves?
Where the comings and goings of things here and there
Are plain to your sight from so high in the air?
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3 comments:
I like that psychotic love in the second movement. So true. So true.
One night, I slept in the pine tree that once stood proud and tall outside of the Campus Center. They've since chopped it down and money rules the world.
Your poem made me wish to be there again.
bravo, poet and storyteller, bravo!
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