Rooted

Rooted.

A nice way of saying “stuck.”

This tree is stuck,

it cannot move

unless a force shall blow, or chop, it down

dead.

Never roaming to distant lands,

or knowing exotic thrills,

it will sprout and bloom,

sleep and wake,

dry up, wither and die all

in one place.

What of this place?

This ground, in which it is stuck, familiar

as its own feet, roots intimate with the soil,

penetrating deep into the darkness, grasping deep into

the ground

ancient beyond memory

and, yet, ever new;

glacier wear of granite ground fine

before its kind ever knew existence,

where long gone ancestors leave their trace

in mounting gain of height,

upon which moving things in age-old patterns kept

find new delights in short-lived glimpses

while this tree looks on

and marvels at the diversity,

the wondrous

multiplication and perpetuation of life.

Through snow and frost, with aches and pains

of bearing the burden of the thick, white blanket

on bare and vulnerable limbs, knowing gratitude

in the heaviness of the protection, but only dimly

while in the midst of the pale light, awaiting the spring,

the return to green, coming in a rush of buds

and melting streams, with showers of tears

shed in relief from loneliness, washed of isolation,

the songbirds and earthworms and budding blooms resuming

the nature of life continuous…

the same old, same old

joy of a full and lively home.

Home, rich in splendor,

knowing every trace of branch above, crisscrossing the sky,

and every lace of grass below, weaving among the pine needles and falling leaves.

The family of deer again, graceful of leg and ravenous of teeth,

though soft and warm of eye. And the brace of rabbits,

wild and leaping, jubilant, unless sleeping

in that same old hollow in the shade,

the shade that the tree has always made,

from which it will never be able to escape.

Stuck, with the bluets and the breeze, the finely

fringed ferns, the mushrooms that bubble

from the ground, the moles and voles, and chipmunks

clambering about, up and down, up

and down, with cheeks full of seeds and nuts,

around and around the circles go,

from autumn’s orange glow to winter’s ice and snow,

then spring is sprung once more and summer’s fruit outpour,

and all is lovely, despite the inexorable pain, the inability

to flee storms of rain, lightning, woodpeckers, bark that cracks with age…

Lovely,

this place,

the same place

where all of its life is lived, where every

dip of the land and stone and slant of light is known,

where the tree gives all that it can give

here, in this place…

deeply, fully,

masterfully

rooted.

© 2021 Christina Chase

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Feature Photo by Julian Hochgesang on Unsplash