Oh mighty tree must you stand so tall?

Do you know how long I have yearned to be near you?

To feel the touch of your skin against the weight of my heavy heart

Since the beginning of time

I have grown accustomed to your beautiful boughs and gentle swaying leaves

I have sat amongst the clustering of your youth

You have protected me against tyranny, hatefulness and shame

Coveted my innocence

Shielding me against preposterous wars based on conflicting religious ideologies

Like the soldier standing erect in a gaze which holds no promise of immortality,

You wilt in the sun against her gaze

Knowing the heat of the day will bring slumber when

night falls and when the moon trapezes across the tapestry of your skin you shine

For you have the sustenance of Mother Nature as a protectorate and the soldier has a loaded gun

Your aching branches hover and protect the flurried winged ones and the dusty trailing nut seekers

Whilst the soldier’s veins bleed an unrelenting sorrow for the innocence of life once taken

Only once

Your vivid beauty, your presence for which words can hardly describe makes pastures of nothingness gape in awe

And for those who come to stand under you or lie quietly at your roots beneath the skies you welcome with

unabandoned love sovereignty and truth

But forgiveness is the hollow in your chest

A place of your sacred heart

For those mankind who have abandoned, misused, and condemned

Your  heart lies heavy but does not lie still nor does it whimper

It listens to the winds of time stir the remembrance of chaos and calamity

It beckons us all to see the gnarly craggy faces and spines of human flesh that hung to rot never knowing the peace you gave

from within your own hollowed heart

Mighty tree, I see you as my savior,  my saint, my holy one.

For I am blessed to hold your woven earthen rounds of time

And I will speak softly to the angels when they come

May I always remember you, Oh Mighty Tree,

for your presence, beauty and your sound

Let freedom ring!

~Nancy Chuda

Oak Pasture Santa Ynez

August 12, 2010

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