On Adopting a Tree
Josh McGee
I have adopted a tree in the grove just outside the library
A strong and wise and sticky pepper tree
With, at last count, six ways to sit for different perspectives.
It is shadier and breezier in my tree than anywhere else in the park
And as I lay sprawled on a tree branch to study
Strains of music flit through my mind like the filtered sunlight dancing on the pages of my
notebook;
My subconsciously-supplied soundtrack always offers something appropriate to my leafy refuge:
W.B. Yeats' "Two Trees" set to Loreena McKennitt's Celtic harp,
And Pearl Jam's intricate, Eastern-influenced harmonies carrying Eddie Vedder's musings
Over his own foster tree somewhere in Seattle.
As usual, I live where two worlds intersect:
Eddie trading stories with the leaves and Yeats' ignorant soul trees both call to me;
I alternate between my green friend to read and the clean library to research;
I hold dead, printed tree in my hands as I recline on living wood;
And I sit at the center of a threatened outpost of wilderness amidst a wasteland of humanity
I am used to being the union of two extremes:
A poet and a mathematician,
A logician and a fountain of emotion,
A grunge rocker and a public-radio addict,
And would not expect the world around me to be any different.
So while stretched out five feet above the grass on my left and eight feet above the cement on my right
Nature and civilization have no more need to compete than do Vedder and McKennitt;
Complementing, enhancing, spinning in circles
But leaning away to provide necessary tension.
Nature and civilization happily join the merry dance of opposites that is my life.
And when I lean back on the thick trunk, and look out at the wide entrance of the library
The music begins to play.
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