Shadow Tree
There, there
little tree.
I feel you shiver
and I know the night is cold,
but our cabin walls will hold off the frost.
Remember not the summer sun
to cast a shadow in the corner of every room
that trails behind from year to year
and whispers in the silent chill
and reminds you of what is lost.
Do not listen to that voice
dripping sweet lies onto withered limbs
to bear false fruit absent the
pests and pestilence brought by its heat.
A misremembered past will poison every day to come
and sleep alongside you in your wintering ground
to dull the wakening spring and blight your blooms.
Likewise, do not let false hope
bring you along too quickly
or the cold will snap,
and cost you a season of color.
We should pinch dry veins and allow
the carpenter ant to tear away dead joinery
of who you were and what you felt
and loosen the grip of root-bound years
that anchor a barren stick upright
in mimicked life and performance only
in the fallow earth of hope.
The winter will claim
what we leave in the field
but not the seeds in our paleosol of loss.
The frost cannot choke our fire
or chill the dinner on our table.
And perhaps we should not
chase away the shadows
at the cost of dousing the flames
that gives them life and
makes them flicker on the floor.
There, just there
little tree.
Let me hold you near the window
and you will see we're not alone.
A wolf stalks the tree line
watching you and me.
He feels the warmth
and sees the fog
our voice spreads on the pane
that makes of us a pantomime
amongst these shadows in the night.
He doesn't know what this room may hold
but he envies us just the same.
I will not lie to you.
For a moment I thought
to throw open the door
and return to settle in my chair
to wrap myself in a grandmother's quilt
and study my breath against the air
to wait for his slow progress forth
his pensive march on calloused paws
silent and steady and sure
guided here by a wiser voice
than I can conjure or endure
to claim his frozen feast of grizzled meat
and gnaw me to the core
so that a traveler would pass and find me here
a runic tale upon the floor.
But if I sleep who will tend the hearth
and keep you safe?
Who will find you in the spring
and place you back beneath the sun?
No doubt our traveler would fail to enter
and leave you all alone.
If our cabin is shut as he backs away
how will you hear the summer creatures play?
Or feel the warm breeze that evening brings
to rustle stalk and stem in its gentle sway?
You will wither here in this room I've built
if I don't stay to see the day.
No, I will keep the door shut
and the fire burning bright
until it is safe to let you go.
Then I promise I will set you free
when you no longer have need of me.
