Cooling the Redwoods

Judith Chibante

Love the sojourner…for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.

Deuteronomy 10:19, ESV

Goliaths of my garden, guardians of shade and spirit, you don’t belong here

in the searing Central Valley of California. You are Sequoia sempervirens—

coastal redwood. If you had not been lifted up—seedlings and saplings—

brought to this not-promised land over the last hundreds of years,

you’d be home greening the cliffs and foothills of beaches and bays,

your limbs laced into ocean fog. So you suffer, our blessing

against blazing sun, the blister of summer. Small offering this—late afternoons,

me in flipflops and sunhat, spray-nozzled hose in hand wetting

your parched trunks, showering burnt tips. Later I lay a slow drip at your feet.

Drink. Sate your thirst. Who of us hasn’t been out-of-place? a stranger?

Judith Chibante lives amid a small ‘forest’ of eight redwoods (each named for a famous poet) in central California. Read more.

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