Trees Are Hollow
A Poem
Trees are hollow.
I noticed that when I went to the park today.
They’re just tall, winding tubes, parting and branching,
around a petrified core.
Are we hollow as well?
Our feelings and thoughts,
our touching and being touched:
Aren’t they just a thin film of life,
barely skin-deep?
And the slumbering hopes and ideals underneath,
all our forgotten convictions and fears:
Aren’t they just layer upon layer of who we once were?
light and dry now
deserted
I wonder how it would be to venture down.
if it would feel like returning to somewhere familiar
welcoming still of who I’ve become
or if things might be moving and shifting deep within
like a tectonic dream
making me buckle and shiver and wonder at night
I don’t want to live on the surface alone.
I want to work my way inwards, down to the core.
make it twist and curl
until my bones creak
and my heart aches
Trees aren’t hollow.
They’re heavy with the memory of distant winters and summers.
and speckled with the marks of overcome hardships
soothed and smoothed over by the years that followed
We aren’t hollow either. But we also cannot live like the trees.
We can’t rest on our roots and sway in the seasons like they do.
We have to breathe and our breath should stretch all the way down.
Only then we can hum and glow from within.
so our hands may be warm
and our eyes clear and bright
like the first morning of spring
