Trees by Peter Gidlund (Ekphrastic)

Trees by Peter Gidlund
Ekphrastic Imitation

Running through a dream, falling through a haze,
pleasure, not joy, seems to be everywhere,
solving a puzzle to feel accomplished,
avoiding the city's incessant howl.

Interrupting the bi-weekly cypress
tea party, I haggardly stumbled to
their holy clearing, I was met by a
volley of contemptuous stares, as they
froze, hardly moving in the gawky breeze.

As if to communicate all at once,
their deafening silence filled the basin,
I received their simple message, I was
unwelcome, like a child in a bar,
seen as a traitor in my own homeland.

Not wanting to look like a schmuck who came
miles from society for nothing,
I started to eat my granola bar,
embarrassed by the wrapper's claim to be
"all natural," I scarfed down my godless snack.

The legion of foot high wheat soldiers stand
at attention, prepared to swipe at my
shins, before I could even attempt to
drop my plastic relic of humanity.
From my perceived littering and loitering,
the Grove emitted their bloodless umbrage.

As I retreated from their dismissal,
I silently rejoined that my devices
are just as Earthly as those elitist shrubs,
 for what in my domain is not temporal?
Dust to dust, rust to brush, all things holy.
Humanity's gizmos and gadgets might
be newfangled and invasive, but they
were once minerals in the dirt, just as
was the trunk of the tree, the spire of
the hedge, or the bill of the platypus.

A waxy wrapper will not decompose,
in a human life, or a redwood's life,
but the planet does not mind, as it is
its kin, though transmogrified by the vile
madness of human ingeniuity,
like a petty science experiment.


What is the spark of life, but a prolonged
chemical reaction, that endlessly
repeats and refracts, setting laws, to break.