Tuesday, July 08, 2008

• phantom limb

  so at the side of our yard lies a dead limb.

  i wonder if the tree feels a phantom limb, the way humans do when they lose an arm.  or when we lose a friend, or lover or parent....expecting them at anytime to walk in the door like they usually do.  except, no.  the closet is half empty.  the phone isn't ringing and yet you still feel like it will any moment.  i wonder if boo radley feels this way.
  
  i half expect to walk out the back porch to see a full, healthy tree bearing much fruit, sprigs of new life covering it, but instead -- the dead limb is still attached to the other "living" limb and the largest limb lays barren, propped next to the fence.  a bench for little ones on the fourth of july.  it's still being used after all it went through.  the embarrassment of falling.  the humiliation of having to be physically sawed off the tree to detach and not bring down the entire thing.  the sock in the gut of being stripped of the luscious fruit it once bore to clean up the mess.  "my hollowness exposed" it says and lays there....waiting to be taken care of, carted off, chopped up, burned in the fire.

  we are going to have to chop the entire tree down.  the hollowness has overcome the fruitfulness and i am tormented to think of it.  i want my awkward, beautifully ugly tree back.  no amount of duct tape will suffice.  nails won't put it back together.

  we had made plans to go slowly and move bit by bit.  "i am sorry, tree, you were worse off than i ever thought."  it looks at me as if to say, "sorry i couldn't hold up under the pressure.  i'm over a hundred years old and have a lot of stories.  kids climbed me.  i nourished people with my beautiful green apples and provided shade in the heat of the summer.  i fed squirrels and kept treasures safe.  and now, i am nothing but a hollow shell of what once was."

  "i still love you, tree."
  "this is embarrassing."
  "it's ok."
  "too much of a load, i guess...."
  "and not enough inner-nourishment."
  
  now, deconstruction and replanting. rebirth and growth.

  • 12:45 PM
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