Lullaby for a Tree

I see you there

All strong and tall,

Standing bare and brave.

You’ve been beautiful for so long now,

And indeed

You always shall be.

It would be

impossible

for you to not be beautiful.

Impossible

for you to not be contributing

in a life-changing way.

I see the gray sky looming over you

And I want to wrap up

All of your arms

In all of my arms

And hold you tight because

Winter is coming and

There will be no mercy.

Winter just

Is

What winter

Is.

I know that you don’t need me.

I know that strength circles you through and through,

But I wish to comfort you-

To sing you a song of the cold and the cold and the cold and the cold and then

The warmth.

I see that it’s going to be dark.

It is going to be cold.

It is going to go on hellishly long.

You will see suffering all around you and

That might be hardest of all.

There will be rabbits that shiver and

Mice caught in claws, pierced to the heart-

And

Hunger

Hunger

Hunger

Gnawing in everyone’s belly

Back again before it ever really leaves.

I see that you will see these hungers

And that your tree-heart will yearn

To lean in close,

With the shelter of a quiet, comfortable cracking of your branches,

But how?

You are stuck-

Caught in your rootedness and your strength.

I see

That my wish to comfort you-

My wish to take this winter burden from you and

To cast it far from us-

I see that

This wish says more about me than it does about you.

To unravel the cold and dark

From your reaches and your twigs,

To steal this season

Would interrupt the rhythm of what must be-

The rhythm of freezing and thawing

And flowing and growing.

Winter just is

What

Winter is.

As I walk past you,

Myself warmly wrapped against the crystal air

and your branches trailing into the fast-flowing creek beside you,

I hum a lullaby

of the cold and the cold and the cold and the cold and then-

The warmth.

A song eternally old and eternally new-

Yes,

We are here in this season, and

Yes,

We are going to be okay.