Evergreen

Dec 13 2015

Evergreens droop with snow,

slumping shoulders 

rounded spines.

They stand

dumbly, forbearing,

like a man

overloaded with life.

Back when,

needles were shed like thinning hair;

preparing for winter

resigned to loss.

To the invisibility

of middle age.

The first snow was heavy, wet,

soggy clumps

that stuck, and stayed.

Then light,

glittering like tinsel

on the festive tree.

Enough, and the old ones break.

While the young

shrug-off their loads;

in a minor breeze

springing-up, and shaking free

like soaking Labradors.

Elastic spruce, with supple ease

erect as sentinels.

But the demoralized man

does not snap back.

And will leave no trace;

interred

under a season of snow,

scoured smooth

by wind.

With any luck, they will find him in spring;

eyes staring blankly,

suit and tie

immaculate.

Except where the dogs

gnawed his frozen flesh.

Another "nature" poem. Another tree poem. Sigh ...

I was looking out the kitchen window, thinking of something to write. A magnificent spruce stared me in the face, drooping under thick clumps of fresh snow. They look beautiful this way, until they shake free under the first big wind, snapping-back.

Evolution has constructed them perfectly. Because evergreens are not ever-green; in preparation for snow, they drop substantial needles, which are as brown as fallen leaves. And their branches are beautifully engineered; slumping at the ideal angle to shed their load.

When the analogy of slumping shoulders came to me, it was probably inevitable I would go on to personify the trees. As well, I must have been influence by having just listened to Ian Brown -- a writer I greatly admire -- being interviewed about his new book Sixty, which is written as a journal of his 61st year. Well, I'm in my 61st year right now. And, of course, have the usual angst of advancing middle age. So the trees not only became men; they became defeated middle-aged men! The ending of the poem is far bleaker than anything to which I (or he) could (or would want to) lay claim. But as I repeatedly assert, these poems are not autobiography; they are acts of imagination and craft.