“The Dead Tree” by Stewart Sanderson
I saw a dead tree
Fossilised in a postcard;
Pressed and starched to papyrus
Like a fly trapped in amber.
I saw your hand on the dead tree;
Ink that once was oil,
Which in itself was once other trees –
Great Jurassic frond waving things,
Pressed and stamped to clay
Before being dug out thousands of lives later
To hold your hand
In penning a letter to me.
Planted on the dead tree’s trunk and leaves
Must have been your fingerprints
And those of every postal worker to handle it since,
Cradling its flat boughs; carrying it to me.
In your fingerprints, soft and invisible
Like an airborne virus,
Was energy gleaned from the last meal you ate.
Your last meal was hacked and sawed
From animals and plants,
Then seared by the light of the self-same oil
As in your blue pen.
As in the earth and northern sea.
As in the guttering whale-lamps that light the room
When bulbs rot down like tulips in the summer.
On the stamp must be a kiss.
Just one;
Held eternal as a fire;
Meant as surely as a lie.
But lies reveal the greatest truths –
What we know and do not want them to know.
What they know and would rather we did not.
In a lie is enshrined the concept
Of what we truly mean;
Things kept just to ourselves,
Held sacred in our beating hearts.
In lies is the incense of prayer;
Because there’s the biggest lie of all,
Enshrined on a million dead trees;
Liturgical, canonical, theological –
Psychological above all.
In a lie there is something good,
Because an anti-truth is still a truth:
A dead tree remains a tree;
A broken promise remains a promise;
A broken heart remains a heart;
A broken man is still a boy.
And we are still alive.
So there, dead tree,
You too are still alive,
You linger on like a barbed thorn rung
That must be climbed in search of love.
Back to Stewart’s Profile
Related Posts
(No Ratings Yet)
Loading ...
Leave your response!