Trees — A Poem
BY B.W. HARRIS
Istand out in the yard and I face each direction,
All the cardinals and their inters, and the smaller ones in between.
Some of them are blocked by trees.
For each direction I face, I say the name of a place,
And I think of how I’ll never go to each place that I say.
Newfoundland, Caerleon, Vatican City, Paraguay
But here in this yard is where I must stay
When I run out of places, I close my eyes and go back in time.
Volcanoes explode, pterodactyls fly!
There’s no cellular service in a primordial world,
No roads, no stores, not even a squirrel.
The landscape changes in the blink of an eye,
Mountains collapse, rivers cry.
Seven million revolutions around a hot ball,
Tiny mammals go to a climb from a crawl.
Did it all really happen?
Some say it did, trees so thick that people lived in them.
They haven’t come down yet, it’s not safe, not safe.
They hide in the canopy, in nature’s embrace.
Above the dark in the night and the dirt on the ground,
If you listen closely, you can hear their sounds.
Grunts and howls fill the leaves.
No words yet, just sounds from trees.
The hot ball blazes fiercely in the center of its space,
The rock twirling and whirling at its constant pace.
Somewhere in a canyon, in the depths of time,
An ape escapes by the skin of its neck,
Up a great rock, away from a big cat.
The scratching of claws and hands, one and the same,
But one of these creatures has a superior brain.
It doesn’t know love yet, but it certainly knows pain.
Up on the dry rock, the ape looks towards the trees,
So green and safe, but so far out of reach.
It waits for the cat to concede its defeat,
To find a tastier, less intelligent treat.
The sun dials into the heart of the apes,
Ringing in a new sense of escape,
From the race of the hunt,
To plants in the ground.
This way is better, enough food to go around.
The trees once climbed are now taken in hand,
Used to till the dirt they once feared to touch,
Handles of tools, a newfound crutch.
The trees are replaced with walls,
Temples great, and hutches small.
With the agrarian ape, armies rise,
The reasons for those walls of such great size.
Weapons in hands at trees’ demise,
Burn my camp and I’ll burn yours,
Salt my soil and I’ll take yours.
Cut down my family tree and you will see,
What an ape can do when it doesn’t flee.
More revolutions give way to revelations,
As newfound ways bear great fruit, civilization takes its root.
Yet has lessened the accountability of the single in the whole.
These apes are too comfortable, they need to create a soul.
They need good and bad, this and that,
They need laws and rules and consequences for their actions,
They need a fiery distraction to keep them in line,
They need Heaven and Hell, a balance to check,
Between order and chaos, not to wreck.
The descendants of the ascended ape on the dry canyon rock,
Gather together in one massive flock to listen to an ape up on a hill,
Tell the others of the big ape in the sky, higher even still.
They sit frozen in focus, ears open wide,
As they once listened for big cats in the night.
That ape on the hill was bonded to a crux made from trees,
The other apes drank his blood for thousands of days,
To repent of their new sin, to make good for their natural ways.
But it didn’t stop them from wielding swords,
Morality and ethics, punishment and reward,
Wasn’t enough to keep these apes at bay.
The Holy See demanded more, to reclaim the ancient shores of yore.
Greed is green and ever-growing,
Apes are apes, and it’s always showing.
Gregorian monks form Calendars,
On sheets from trees laced with gold leaves.
Apes now have years, months, days, weeks,
On which now every ape seeks
To bide their time while big-time apes
Grow ever bold with crowns on heads,
Slaves are bought and slaves are bred.
In fleets, trees sail on the ocean’s spread.
Years pass by as cannonballs fly.
Muskets spark and then go boom,
Some apes die while others bloom.
Is the tyrant here with us in the room?
Let the apes eat cake, but what they need is bread.
Time rolls on, and so do heads; this place is a circus.
Gatherings in big rooms divided into left and right,
The spectacle of the masses’ bicker,
The politicians now grow slicker,
Than any big-time apes ever before.
More rhymes and reasons to have a war, as a candle’s flicker
Morphs into a coil’s hum, the hearth is no longer the family sum
Ape sounds now fill the air itself like once filled the trees.
Ape heads in boxes talking, giving none a reason to leave
Their nests of steel and glass, eyes fixated on a flickering light.
As the nuclear family goes to war, atoms split while stars are born,
None of it matters in the grand scheme of things,
A pale blue dot littered with trees,
Some apes who one day will cease to be
Like many before them and even me, I think to myself as,
Istand out in the yard and I face each direction,
All the cardinals and their inters, and the smaller ones in between.
Some of them are blocked by trees.
…
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