Old Cedar Tree

Old cedar tree
twisted branches reaching to the sun
bark hairy
leaves prickly
shelter
some branches broken by
the heavy snows of the past
others able to withstand
even though pushed to the ground
by the weight.

Am I like this tree?
old and some parts
beginning to twist
a bit disheveled at times
parts prickly
but also providing shelter
sometimes pushed to the ground
by the weight of burdens,
but then rising up when they melt away.

The tree just has to be a tree,
I only have to be me.

Persimmon

you held the girls' swing on your strong green arm
back and forth we sang the Robert Louis Stevenson poem
How do you like to go up in a swing
and now that branch is gone

I sit under you remembering
my great warning to the girls
if you hear a snap or a crack ...... run

half of the bark is missing from your base
you leaf out each spring
holding onto life

when you decide to fall
you will take out the swing set
I am too tired to move that

I love finding patterns in your leaves
out my bedroom window on summer mornings
and watching your bare branches
dance in the wind on winter days

you have become my dear friend

From Thich Nhat Hanh

Posted on September 3, 2016 by Chris Wallach

“When you plant lettuce, if it does not grow well, you
don’t blame the lettuce. You look for reasons it is not
doing well. It may need fertilizer, or more water, or
less sun. You never blame the lettuce. Yet if we have
problems with our friends or family, we blame the other
person. But if we know how to take care of them, they will
grow well, like the lettuce. Blaming has no positive
effect at all, nor does trying to persuade using reason
and argument. That is my experience. No blame, no
reasoning, no argument, just understanding. If you
understand, and you show that you understand, you can
love, and the situation will change”
― Thich Nhat Hanh

Scorched Earth

I have been reading Scorched Earth by Fred A. Wilcox. It is about Agent Orange in Vietnam. My father suffered from exposure to Agent Orange.

The Vietnam War was not the first time that young men were sent off to kill and die for what their government and their fellow citizens considered a noble cause. Nor was it the first time that young men who’d been sent to war by flag-waving crowds returned home to find that they were expected to marry, find a job, start a family, and get on with their lives. Men and women who have experienced combat would like to do these things, but they carry scars, memories, and terrors, that will haunt them for the rest of their lives. Vietnam veterans did not want to believe that their government would expose them to chemicals that, years later, would devastate their immune systems, making them susceptible to a host of diseases like kidney failure, heart disease, diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, brain tumors, and various kinds of cancer. They did not want to believe that corporations that profited from manufacturing and selling deadly chemicals would chose to deny their products’ toxicity, and that these corporations would refuse to offer to help veterans of what, at the time, was our nation’s longest, second most expensive, and most divisive conflict since the Civil War.

Rape