Mother Nature Sleeps Here

Deep beneath the Pacific Northwest’s

Clouded, streaming sun,

A giant Sequoia Redwood

Towers six stories tall

Twenty feet 'round,

As if Mother Nature yawned

Eons ago,

Having suddenly grown tired

From making her earthen wares,

And so readily dipped

Herself

Into a bed of reddened clay

Right here in my tiny, fenced backyard

Burrowed down deep

Her giant, mineral-rich frame

Leaving only one grand, wooden arm

Extended in a stately reach,

A stationary, stalked salute

to her celestial en-sistered stars.

As I look out of my window

(One of the tiny, pin-pricked holes in this shoebox)

Far below her shadowy

Canopy of spindled fingers,

As I rake her perpetually raining blanket of needles,

And dig my fingers into the top shelf of her cold, composted soil,

Attempting to imitate what comes so naturally to her,

With my amateur gardener’s murderous touch

And laughably green-less thumbs,

As I barbeque and change clothes,

Dance and nurse,

Eat sushi and curse a bad hand of cards,

Eventually growing old and brittle,

Becoming as feeble as my paper palace,

I hope that she’ll keep offering a friendly wave,

A gentle embrace that reaches full-round our house,

The crawl space pressed upon her horizontal womb,

Left arm gripped tight on the drainage system

Tucked dark beneath the street.

Even if she’s jutting forth

God's own, personal sign language,

A clear indication of, “STOP!

Venture no further,

Tread lightly ‘round my roots

If you want to keep on reproducing

Let alone breath this quality air

I’m making 'round the clock!”

I view it as kindly.

Like an "off-the-record" warning from a rounded, old cop

Who no longer cares about making his quota.

I think of her gently,

Always,

Loving her long, shapely shadow as she cradles us,

A cement foundation for her head dress,

The hardened, man-made crust encasing her skull.

All this amuses her, I think.

(Trend-setter that she is, she may like a mortared hat.)

She could break free so easily.

She could rise up and shake off shingles

Like weightless flecks of dust,

Play “kick the can” with our pretty, shuttered cottage,

Shake the tree house like a cup of dice,

Roll off tickling raccoons and shrieking owls,

Splatter mice like rain drops

As she gathered height,

Straightening her gorgeous spine

Up into the stratosphere.

Every time my fingers hit piano keys,

When I’m lying warm in bed,

When I write or read

Or cook or wash the makeup from my face,

I feel her presence softly in this space

The fleeting home we’ve staked in

This wooded world she so keenly crafted.

Like God, she’ll remember us, won’t she?

Our garden that would never take,

The fence that wobbled in the wind,

The crying babies and screaming matches,

The laughter poured from opened windows,

Lights left on and T.V. blaring

With no regard to a prone, sleeping Goddess,

So patient and preposterously powerful?

I regard the length of her thick, barked arm,

The wave of her digited branches,

The loss of needles, soft hair like mine,

Falling out in clumps when she’s distressed,

The way she houses all the homeless

And braces out the cold.

I grow weary on her behalf,

Knowing how long she’s kept

Such a mighty appendage majestically upright.

I love her long, unbroken shadows,

Her shoulder’s brute, poised strength,

Her quiet disposition and willingness to share

All the God-given treasures

That are rightfully hers

To have and to hold.

If she drops this pose, we will surely be

Brilliantly

Smashed to smithereens--

Make no doubt about

The impact of her tall-treed clap

And its standing ovation-ability

To erase my cutesy, hen-pecking life

As I comfortably know it,

And the blessed future I hope to slowly unearth.

Yet, I have to think she so deeply deserves

My unabashedly sweet backyard,

This quaintly pretty resting place,

A final repose, perhaps,

For both of us Mothers some day,