Once

I took it all once. I did not care, because there was always more. It seemed so easy and predestined. Everything would turn out okay, there was good in everyone.
But when you watch them break so slowly it can be seen. As if once cracked nothing can be put back together. Once they are dead they can’t be brought back. I know this so deeply. It was the knowing that hurt. But if I hadn’t known then the shock would have been too much to bare.
How can I be happy when I have this in my heart?
I sat inactive in his house, same as always. And I just watched him die.
I was given no responsibility, and I didn’t take any.
But knowing I can’t do anything doesn’t mean it hurts any less.
There are songs in me, and I will keep writing. I will not get his approval, or his laughter.
Losing someone that cared for you is hard. And I know he loved me.
Am I just trying to cry? Or do I mean it?
Tears sometimes feel like they will fix things. But I cannot rely on them, it is not true to myself.
I want to cry. It might make everything better. It won’t bring her back though, and he won’t be alive.
The music plays and reminds me of times, of emotions, and I wish I understood it all.

Sean's Tree Interview

My Step-Father Sean died at the end of this summer. Looking back I wish I'd gotten to know him better, all I ever saw was someone who was very sick. I didn't see all the things he knew, and now sometimes I find myself wanting to know things about knife fights, or dog training, and he just isn't there. Sean was a gutter-punk, chef, husband, tree remover, a hell of a lot of other things, but most of all he was honest to a fault. I interviewed him in 2010 for my Trees class and found a side of him I hadn't know.

“I didn't particularly enjoy cutting down trees, but the ones we did cut down were sick, or dangerous. They could fall down on a house or something, I would never just run into the forest and start cutting down trees willy-nilly. Trees are every bit as much a part of the world as every thing else. Including humans... I don't mean that humans and trees are the same; you can't just go cutting down humans when they get sick. But trees can't be taken for granted either. For example I would rather that parking lots be built up around trees, especially old ones. Trees deserve to be there just as much as a parking lot. Even more.

"The most memorable tree I ever cut down was a huge old live oak. Out there you need a license to cut down an oak. The licence says that it is sick, or a danger to power lines or a house. The tree had fungus rot from the inside, so we could easily get the license. The oak was on the property of this old couple, who were afraid it would fall on their house. We looked at the tree, and I knew we could have saved it, just cut parts off. But the old couple would not understand, and were afraid that if a tornado or anything came the tree would fall on their house. So we had to cut it down.

"Cutting down trees didn't change my view on trees, it changed my view of human ignorance. I mean the oak had been there hundreds of years before the house was even built, and had lived all that time. But this old couple saw something on TV, like a tornado where a tree fell down on a house. And they got scared. On TV no one ever talks about the innumerable trees that don't fall, just the few that do. If there was a tornado strong enough to lift that tree the house damn sure wouldn't survive the tornado anyways. It was just some fungus on the oak.

 "Who's Grandfather Oak? I can't believe I never took you to see Grandfather Oak. The best damn part of New Orleans. Grandfather Oak is a Voodoo and Wicca ritual site. He is a huge tree, an entity to himself. His branches are so old and heavy they bend to the ground, and among his roots you can find just the right spot to sit, it's really easy to fall asleep under him. He is very comforting, and people come from all over to see him. He is decorated all year round, with little bottles of rum, beads, and other baubles. There are always salt circles around him from Voodoo rituals.

"I first heard about Grandfather Oak through the street kids I squatted with when I moved to NOLA. I was about 19 or 20. Grandfather Oak isn't the only oak in that park, there's also Hanging Oak, Kids Oak, Dueling Oak... But you can look this all up online.

"Your mom really wants me to tell you this one story. I was up in a paper pine, maybe 60 feet off the ground. The hybrid paper pine, it grows out of control, fast tall and skinny. It was bred for paper, and that's all it's good for, it's not sturdy enough for anything else. It's really invasive, and it taking over the south, destroying the ground coverage. They would pay people 100$ per acer to plant this tree, In the 30's maybe? And then they would come back 20 years latter to cut it down. This tree is now just a weed, it attracts pine beetles, and then you just have fields of dead trees you could push over with one hand.

 "Oh, but I was up in the tree with my spiked shoes and a harness. because of how weak the tree is you have to cut off a bit at a time. Well I cut off too much from the top. So it snapped and started to bend. Because of my harness, the tree started shaking me like a paddle and ball whacking me into the tree. I got some pretty bruises.

"All I can tell you now is that Cherry blossoms and dogwood are gorgeous. And nothing smells better then a Magnolia. The smell permeates New Orleans, the humidity amplifying the effects. Except Bourbon street. That just smells like shit. Oh, and the best valentines day present I ever got your mother was a tree swing I built for her."

Trust

Realizing that the world is vastly different than I ever believed.
How did I ever have faith in the future, and where can I find that faith again?
I felt protected.
The world was what people told me to do, everything decided.
Now I am sort of floating.
I feel more loved than ever before in my life,
but also more scared.
Who do I want to be? How do I get out of bed? And where do I find happiness?
In a way I know the answers, I know what I am supposed to do, I just don’t know what I want.
Do I just need to give myself up?
Stop thinking “this is me,”
and just turn myself into someone who is searching. Enjoy the chase and watching the change.
Stop asking what the future holds and instead work on making it hold anything.
Stop fearing that there will not be anything for me to hold.
Trust.

Texas Travels

She’s coming home again. Like countless times before she is filling me with hope. 
That beautiful feeling that I am glad I can still feel.

But,

I know in the end it will only hurt.
She claims to love me, but she deems herself more important. Leaving is easy for her, just pack up and go. Things get hard? New state, new life, new lovers.
I miss her so goddamn much. I have cried my tears and healed the pains, but each time I think I might find happiness, she returns.
Returns with her love, fun, good cooking, and hurt.
In the end it is always the hurt.
I forgive her, I will always forgive her, but that doesn’t mean I lack grief.
His death came, and I am still crying,
The birth will come, and I will cry again.
Why does she do this? It is her life, but it seems to be one of regrets.
I love her. I always will, but I know it’s not enough. It will never be enough.
In the end, it's all just hurt.

Music

And his calloused fingers caught my attention.  The rough cracked edges bleeding music like a charm, the deep voice losing those high notes, but shaking emotions into me when ringing low.
I could shake my head and learn wonderful new things.
Did his eyes stray? I did not notice. I am in deep deep trouble of getting an impossible to fulfil crush. Of idolizing, my thoughts stuck on someone I do not know and cannot have.
At the same time it would be so fun, to platonically play music. Maybe sometime I will see him again.
I dreamt of him, and in sleep his fingers did twine around me. Impossible, and not fair, so not fair. Not fair to him. I might be able to get him, but there would be too many tangles, much much too many.
Where can my dreams go? My passions? I love the beautiful highs they give me, but when I realize how unattainable it is I know I will crash. I want to build on this manic energy and feed it. Instead I step back and look at my world. It is all stories, writing, dreams.
I need to find someone who can be these dreams, but I don't think I can. Expectations too high, I don't even know everything I want. I desire, I need. What I need is to be able to love someone, but I just can't. Not yet.

The Last Passenger Pigeon on Earth

"Men still live who, in their youth, remember passenger pigeons. Trees still live who, in their youth, were shaken by a living wind. But a decade hence only the oldest oaks will remember, and at long last only the hills will know.”  -Aldo Leopold, ecologist. (May 1947)

---

Late in the August of 1914, Claude got a telegram from a nurse he had never met, and he returned to his family farm in Iowa to watch his father die. When he arrived, his father - who had once worked the land nearly every day and used to make up poetry to tell Claude at bed time - was now a shell of a person. He had no words left by the time Claude arrived, and died a few weeks later, when the wild roses were beginning to bloom. The family auctioned off the farm to cover funeral costs and debts.

A few days after the last papers were signed Claude sat in the fading twilight on the sagging front porch of the house that his great-grandfather had built eighty three years ago. He leaned against a support pillar and watched the men fell the aspen, birch and hazelnut trees of the vast woods that were once, 15 years ago, his playground. A few crows rose from an aspen with a cavalcade of caws as the tree fell with a crash to join the others. The birds flew over the porch, making silhouettes against the dim sky, and he was overcome by a memory from nearly twenty five years past.

-

It was an early September evening when Claude, then a young boy, had stood on the sagging front porch of his family’s farmhouse while his mother made biscuits inside. Above him, the sky was filled with millions of tawny birds. Horizon to horizon, the land was covered in a canopy of beating wings. He leaned on the porch railing for over an hour - head tilted upwards until his neck hurt - watching the sky darkened by migratory bodies and listening to the thrumming of wings passing above. When his mother called him in for supper he could hardly eat, thinking about the birds that were still flying over the house and fields. He imagined that they encased the earth, that everywhere children were sitting at their tables saying Grace and eating their biscuits, with the great flock connecting them all.

His father looked thoughtful all through the biscuits and green beans, and the family had just begun eating their rhubarb pie when he said, Do you know what sort of birds those are, Son? Claude shook his head. Those are passenger pigeons. They both looked out the window for a long moment before his father spoke again. I don’t think there are as many pigeons as there used to be. When I was a boy I saw flocks this big nearly every year. Once a single flock took an entire day to pass overhead. We hunted them, too. I used to get hundreds in a day. He looked back at his son. This is the first flock I’ve seen in years. I wonder where they’ve all gone? His words lingered as they finished their meal.

After supper Claude stood outside on the porch beside his father and they watched the sky. They had only been out for a few minutes when the flock began to thin out. They could see stars between the beating wings, and the whirring began to quiet. It was not long before the night fell silent and only occasional stragglers made dark outlines against the nighttime sky. A few minutes after that, the passenger pigeons were gone.

-

Now Claude sat on the porch of what was once his family home, gazing into what remained of his childhood forest. It had grown dark, and the loggers had left for the night. Four hundred miles away, the last passenger pigeon on earth died at the Cincinnati Zoo. Claude stared up at the empty sky and began to cry.

---

In memory of

Aldo Leopold, ecologist. 1887-1948

and

Martha, the last passenger pigeon. 1885-1914

Note: Scientists estimate that passenger pigeons once made up 25 to 40% of the birds in North America. Flocks were reported that covered the sky from horizon to horizon and blocked out the sun, stretched 300 miles long and took up to 14 hours to pass. In the early 1800s, passenger pigeon meat was sold as cheap food for slaves and servants because it was so plentiful. Hunters caught them by the hundred thousands with nets strung between trees in their breeding areas. Deforestation affected them heavily because they required large areas of forest for communal breeding grounds. Population declined sharply after the 1870s. Since they required large flocks to breed, captive breeding failed. The last passenger pigeon was named Martha, and died at the Cincinnati Zoo on September 1st 1914.

Slow

Her body swings, and joints don’t matter. Flowing movements and dizzy head. Dancing transcends thought, sending endorphins rushing. Her soul rolls out her mouth, and she could scream into this night, let laughter rip her apart. Instead a small laugh escapes, and she kisses her young squeeze. Mixture of limbs and kisses, usually such a mix comes only from the wildest of nights, but here freedom is everything. Eyes roll in wild enthusiasm, restraint is unknown. Bodies take the idea of sexy, and go so far past that it isn’t even on the mind any more. Enjoying movement becomes all that matters. Exhaustion is forgotten and removed. Admiration is the payment of the mind, each glance fueling more and more static mind, more and more movement of flesh. Elation.

Returned

The great Albuquerque sky opens its arms to me,
sunset radiating rays,
and it reassures me
that possibilities--
much like itself--
do not ever end.

Bright Eyes

Kissing fingers run down my skin.

I am over sensitive, and even unintentional touches can wrack me with shivers. I take the hand that feeds me, and raise it to my lips. Wishing to tell it how I feel.

Instead I realize I am awake, and the hand just a dream. For me the longing stares, telling me I’ve put too much hope into fleeting moments.

I reach around my darkened room, looking for something to comfort me. Something to stave off the disappointment.

Nothing.

Sleep won’t return, and neither will the bliss of believing that someone I like could be attracted to me. It’s too much to ask for.

No one falls so quickly as I, or for such little encouragement. A glance of ice-blue eyes, a word in which I swear I can see his dreams. A snap connection fleeting and lost.

Would he kiss me if I leaned in close? If I pulled him aside, just out of view, and asked him a question. Standing a bit closer then necessary, looking him full in the face. Telling him -- with my rapt attention -- that what he says means something to me. Could I kiss him?

I doubt it.