WHAT THE HINOKI CYPRESS DID TO HIM THIS TIME

 

WHAT THE HINOKI CYPRESS DID TO HIM THIS TIME

If a person can get the reading of scripture right,

punctuation, tone, delivery—including pauses,

and get out of the way of one’s self,

one might upset the body in such a way

that trails change, and even blood circulating

in the body listens. Writing after loss

in a notebook without context.

A favorite tree, the Hinoki Cypress,

ten years old at planting,

another ten years in the ground,

was dead. His link between

the word and the garden is now broken.

And when I get to the point

of doing nothing, he says to himself,

Do even less. Volubility,

once a gift, talkativeness,

enthusiasm, illusion itself is good.

Realizing the story in the book

is his wife’s story, compassion’s

quiet breath re-enters the room

through a television screen.

He was reading a book.

Through abandonment

she had become one of the world’s great mothers.

He turns into the nursery’s driveway

from the wrong direction. The nursery

under Mt. Si’s rain cloud, off the highway

on Valentine’s Day where his dreaming

had told him he might find

Slender Hinokis, smaller, but wrapped

in burlap with root balls,

he has forgotten his medicine

on his way to the mecca of medicine,

and here, between worlds, layerings

of cloud and highway between

himself and destination, he drives

straight through to the trees, and where

she appears, Who is she?,

in a gravelled driveway

from the half-dome greenhouse, saying,

Let me cut this twine from its branches

and open her so that you might view

the lines to the trunk. He knows

the best time to have planted these trees

was ten years ago, and those

ten years are gone. Lost

in this kind of thought, he sees her ring

as she cuts the plastic rope with her knife--

Oh, my ring. It’s made from Damascus Steel.

She straightens, and lays her hand in his

to show him. It’s hard and soft woven carbon.

The forged steel of sword blades,

Damascus steel smithed in the Near East

from ingots of Wootz steel, its patterns

of banding and mottling of flowing water

form ladders and roses. She turns again

back towards the trunk of the Hinoki.

Yes, these trees, smaller after the pandemic,

nurseries suffer first and here’s the news.

Crucible moments in ultra high carbon steel.

Tough and weathered trees, sharp, resilient.

Weapon blades and wedding rings.

Scripture in an oral tradition.

The moment is never the same twice.

Can you put a ribbon around this tree,

tagging it with my name?

It is like the naturalness of breathing

how he will pass on this waking language.

Jim Bodeen

15 February 2023