The Loblolly
I often remember the colossus
that grew perilously close to my house: its stupendous height,
the pungency of its needles, massed like a cool green oasis.
I loved that pine, and its ending
haunts me. I hesitate to say a tree is conscious — though
no doubt the loblolly could communicate, root to crown,
with itself, registering the lop
of each limb by the methodical young man in the safety harness,
who grew larger and larger as he worked his way down.
Could “talk” too with microbes
in the soil, and with the vast sprawling web of fungal hyphae –
and through them with its redbud neighbor, and likely
even with the pines two fences over.
But conscious? Numerous studies have made it seem plausible.
Still, I can’t commit, as much as I might like to.
Back then, I thought: Sure, sensitive –
on some level. Is that why I’d whisper: “You are magnificent,”
as if it understood, and, in autumn, thanked it for the cones
gracing my table, the brown needles
mulching the azaleas. Now, when I marvel at the many rings
on its massive stump, I wonder about its history of insults –
the beetles, borers, the needle rust.
How many ice storms and straight-line winds?
I can’t shake my sense of the pine’s stoic bearing
as the chain saw buzzed.
ANNE RICHEY is the author of Church of the Robin's Ha-Ha: John Burroughs' "Natural Religion" and Other Poems.. Read more.