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
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