Nickole Brown

There’s a damn good chance we’ve pushed things too far, that the beautiful and destructive species we are will soon blast past those two degrees of warming set as our worst-case limit, that the very thing feared most—the apocalypse—has already happened and we just haven’t felt the extent of devastation to come. And yes, I realize I sound downright Biblical, that my Christ-haunted Kentucky roots may well be showing. If so, forgive me. But I can’t help but say what I see. When I encounter a new species of plant or tree or animal, I always do so with pure joy, but after taking a minute to assess their current predicament in this world we’ve made, I end up muttering the same little private prayer, a mantra that repeats and repeats, Oh, please don’t die.

So what can we do? Well, for me, this means I have to reconfigure the noun hope into a verb, meaning hope should be something I do instead of something I might (or more generally might not) feel. Related to this is the necessity to get myself out of the way, to stop making my own self the center of all things. I mean, my life can get terribly complicated and messy, but it’s no more complicated or messy than the many lives—both human and not—right outside my door, and this includes the Black Walnut of this poem. Now, as the poem confesses, this gorgeous, strong tree has, for years now, been the bane of my existence, causing more damage than I care to admit every autumn with her cannonball fall of fruit. But when I allow myself to bear witness to this tree and see how hard she works and how much life she sustains, it confirms that my life isn’t center stage on this little piece of property in which I make my home. No, she belongs here as much as I do, and I’m just one of many actors here. This great mother of a tree offers a deeper understanding of my life not just as my life but as one life, in connection and communication with all others. This tree is kin to me, and above all else, you protect your kin. You do whatever you can to sustain them, far into the future, no matter how uncertain it may be.