Druid Wood
A three-part poem on the importance of climbing trees.
1. In a lake that no one saw, though it shone a dazzling blue, a drowning body reached up high for a sky it never knew. Her fingers broke the surface just as reeds blown by the wind; the shining sun cast brightly as the water pulled her in. The flowers turned their faces from the dirt from which they grew, for every leaf and petal knows that not all light is new. The cold wind blows across the earth and if they had a choice, they'd chose to live beneath the hearth where fire brightly burns, and snowflakes go to die. They die beneath the burning coal, and bricks which have no price. The melting dirt which keeps us warm will not put up a fight. The earth - our home - our truest friend, though wrecked from cold and warm, will be our Master to the end; its trees, our hearts to warm. 2. The apples growing in the Spring, the flowers blooming first, are Sacred Wood's sweet offering to those which it has birthed. The sweetness lies in not the fruit but in the seed itself; it knows the gift it's offered you- just take it for yourself. The burden true, and scary too, is something of itself, but something in it knew of you and pulled you off the shelf. It saw a plant that never grew and could not help itself. The leaves that grow and sometimes change from sunlit green to red know all that it has taken you to live this life you've lead. They know that all we have in life is all that we can touch, and promise to remain the light that never gives us up. The red and orange Autumn hue- the yellow, gold and bright- reminds me of my time with you, though you're not here tonight. 3. The earth as judge and sea as witness, the only ones that know, that every soul has its own sickness; that every spirit knows that Time will bring it all together, whatever it may be . . . that all the lashed skin, marred by leather, will sink beneath the sea. I do not know if it's a God who knows the souls he drowns- it may well be some earthly force which keeps us, tightly bound. The trees watch over, faithfully, they know the way we ache, and just like humans, painfully, they take, and take, and take. Absorbing all they do not want like moss on aging stone, the algae in the sea grows thick yet still, it loves you more. It is not sacrifice which sanctifies the Druid Wood, nor sacrifice which sends the young sailors to the sea. It's Love.
-M.Shultz