Arbor Day
1.
Don't just hug a tree, talk to it. Place your hand on its bark and make it take confession.
Tell it your grandmother's grandmother's grandmother was a magnolia and now every April a piece of you blooms pink and full of hubris.
Tell it you have walked at night through the forest, have heard its language. That though you do not understand you feel its roots entangled in your throat.
Tell it you were raised by a low-slung oak. Say how it was the only thing great enough to contain your sadness, how you wept and wept in its arms.
2.
(Maybe you're lying)
(Maybe you are not actually part tree)
(Maybe you will never understand their language (its fungal conjunctions))
(Maybe your skin will never harden into a rough and lichened bark)
(That's OK)
(Don't sweat it) (don’t cry)
3.
In the morning, you will put on your jacket and walk into the world.
You will greet the grass with your toes, the earth with your skin.
The wind is invisible and moves inside your mouth. You feel it pooling, cool and full of the sun.
Everyone has a lot to say if you can stop talking long enough to hear them say it. You listen and listen and do not understand a word.
(4.)
The trees meet you in the forest, gray and yellow and full of sap. In April, the trees are so tender it makes you lightheaded.
You walk among them and do not know them, and the moment will pass before they ever know you are there.
You will memorize their leaves: lobed, serrated, palmate.
You will learn their forms: open, spreading, weeping.
You will speak the names they didn’t choose: aspen, alder, birch, yew.
LIZ HUTCHINSON is a writer living (and weeding) on Cape Cod. Read more.