Taking What is Given - April 22 2024

 

Taking What is Given

April 22 2024

Earlywood

in mild springs

and long summer days.

After months of scarcity

standing dormant in the cold,

the tree, in its greed

is drinking up the sun

and growing fast as possible;

a fat band

of pale golden wood.

While in the contraction of fall

and dull ascetic winters,

a frugal ring of latewood

is dense and dark;

thin

beside the generous band of blonde.

So ring after ring

the tree steadily grows

in sync with the earth,

taking what is given

and no more than it needs.

We are not trees, of course.

We always want more,

as if we lived

in perennial summer.

We sprout quickly,

live fast,

then topple in a minor gust;

that is, if we’re lucky enough

to reach a ripe old age.

While a tree seems permanent;

rooted firmly

where the seed landed

the sapling flourished

and it grew strong and tall,

standing high overhead

where it seems, at least to us

eternal as the landscape.

The way you hardly notice

something that’s always been there.

Still, we grow dark as well.

The plump baby

with its milk-fed skin

and golden hair

has turned wizened, mottled, shrunken,

spirits dulled

back bent

gait shuffling.

There is a darkness

that comes from having lost,

from the banality of evil

you can’t help but witness

from living a life

in the real world.

Not everyone dies a cynic,

but I know I will.

Our latewood is also thin.

Skin turns to paper

bones become brittle,

and after long enough

there will be no more summers

to make us strong again.

No memory

encoded in our rings.

No forever

rooted in place,

standing firm

as if the sands of time

were barely a trickle,

human lives

flashing by

beneath our watchful gaze.

For some reason, even though I can easily picture a cross-section of tree rings, I never twigged to the terms earlywood and latewood.

This seasonal pattern of growth, this slowness, and this living within its means immediately struck me with its nobility, and also with how different it is than the way we lead our lives.

A tree records its history in cross-section: horizontally, in space. We’re also light and dark, but our history is longitudinal and over time. And with us, isn’t recorded at all. It’s only present in memory and consequence.