No!

This is not an ode to some tree

pointing, skyward, toward some divinity

I will never see.

Nor is it an answer to the conundrum of a tree

falling in a forest, alone, so is there noise?

(Of course there’s noise! For squirrels and birds hear very well

and there are never neither squirrels nor birds in the woods.)

No.

This is a simple poem about

that lovely, perfectly shaped tree my child finds

in her frolic among the wood-lot on our property

and she comes, running home, a dervish,

all shouts and exclamations and invitations to,

“Come quick! See my tree! Now!”

like as though it might, in the moments it takes to run there,

grow itself out of perfection,

(like Marybeth may, some day, in another poem…)

But, since, tis’ the season,

I grasp her offered hand

as we tromp through the mix of snow, slush and mud,

as it’s been unseasonably warm lately,

to see the perfect tree of my daughters imagination.

But, the now-adult-I-am sees her tree

among Mother Nature’s other miscalculations and deformities

and I think, “Ah! How lovely it could be,

disguised with shiny, shimmering tinsel,

a glowing, electric-rainbow-shawl

and a geometric camouflage of glass and crystal ornaments,

more than enough to obscure its original glory.

Becoming, nearly, but not quite de-Naturaled

but not quite as bad as those silvery, plastic monstrosities

I see in Wal-Mart while shopping for Girrill-a-glue.

A sure sign of the coming holiday season,

a rationalization doused with pine-scent.

So, I say to my wild-child,

now running, screaming around her tree,

“Oh! Yes, Baby-Girl! It’s lovely!

I’ll go get my ax and kill it for the Holy-days!

Think of all the presents stashed beneath its bowes!

And it’s SO fresh and healthy!

Imagine how happy Mommy will be with so few needles on the floor!”

“Wow!” She shouts. “Yeah!!”

(Though I had her at “…presents stashed…”)

And so, to celebrate the new doctrine of Trinity with a tree,

I hew it down,

drag it through the muck,

shroud the first step toward the Cross with artificiality,

all the while singing praise-to-Santa-hymns

around the pagan yule tree,

tripping over our nearly-wrapping-paper -buried

store-bought Nativity.