Stumpsprouts
Been here much more than a while
- Location
- Asheville
Eckart Tolle got me out of a pretty dark time back in 2008. He's got some great insights. The Sacred Path of the Warrior by Chogyum Trungpa was a more fertile dive into similar themes.
I didn't realize there was this thread. I've been writing loads of poetry lately. This one was inspired by doing an extensive tree risk assessment along the Blue Ridge Parkway, marking hazardous trees for removal.
Collapsing
‘Collapsing’, I announced
And it was thusly scribed. We no longer judge them as ‘defects’
but as ‘conditions of concern’ -
at least we’ve offered them that partial grace.
Partially failed / Failed
Dead / Actively failing
Dead / Dead / Dead
Uprooted / Hollow /Dead
A tree hung up in a tree held up by a tree
on top of a tree leaning against a tree
wedged against a tree pressing against a tree
leaning over a road - mostly dead.
Dead.
What value do I ascribe to a passer-by?
Did they love contagiously?
Did they learn to let go?
To dance with the wind?
The same gusts that tripped this stem - mostly dead - collapsing -
This is the same wind that set you to haunting me.
Uprooted. Rotten. Splitting. Failure imminent.
Each condition of concern thusly scribed.
I am surrounded by stems who I have already written off.
Their pulsing bulging bulbs ignoring these words -
“You should have failed by now.”
I am speaking an incoherent language.
I am speaking the language of numbers.
I am speaking the language of humans.
I have forgotten
what love can do to a cell
how it spills out of each molecule
how it shimmers endlessly, beyond
whether vertical or horizontal
I didn't realize there was this thread. I've been writing loads of poetry lately. This one was inspired by doing an extensive tree risk assessment along the Blue Ridge Parkway, marking hazardous trees for removal.
Collapsing
‘Collapsing’, I announced
And it was thusly scribed. We no longer judge them as ‘defects’
but as ‘conditions of concern’ -
at least we’ve offered them that partial grace.
Partially failed / Failed
Dead / Actively failing
Dead / Dead / Dead
Uprooted / Hollow /Dead
A tree hung up in a tree held up by a tree
on top of a tree leaning against a tree
wedged against a tree pressing against a tree
leaning over a road - mostly dead.
Dead.
What value do I ascribe to a passer-by?
Did they love contagiously?
Did they learn to let go?
To dance with the wind?
The same gusts that tripped this stem - mostly dead - collapsing -
This is the same wind that set you to haunting me.
Uprooted. Rotten. Splitting. Failure imminent.
Each condition of concern thusly scribed.
I am surrounded by stems who I have already written off.
Their pulsing bulging bulbs ignoring these words -
“You should have failed by now.”
I am speaking an incoherent language.
I am speaking the language of numbers.
I am speaking the language of humans.
I have forgotten
what love can do to a cell
how it spills out of each molecule
how it shimmers endlessly, beyond
whether vertical or horizontal
