There was a tree, grown old,
moss soaked and gray beneath the moon,
where I hung my lonely soul upon a branch
and stared up at stars
that I used to nearly touch.
Oh, how I had fallen from the heights
that I held so long obsessed,
in the mind that I had sworn I’d sold
but instead had barely bought.
I had fallen, from hallow into hole
and was left in broken fever
to seek life in love, earth, and bone,
near the tree where I’d been cast
down to discover what I’d never known.
So I watched the sky, and the tree watched me
longing for my own way to shine,
longing to be free;
after I, like ink, had been spilled on a page
where I never desired to be
and was left naked, my soul hanging
heartbroken next to me.
His branches wrapped around the filth I had been
and covered me in emerald green,
like embers of spring’s sparkling heart
and memories of when I was young;
when I was innocent and true,
and soft, like the lullabies
that your mother sang to you.
The earth moved, then
with a thrumming sound of the ocean’s throat
and the hopeful song of summer’s breeze,
as the tree sang to mend my lonely soul
and consume the pollutions I’d sought to keep.
So it sang stars, moon, and hope
and I began to melt away into sleep
as all creation rose to join the tune
that the earth has ever longed to sing.
My eyes beheld the ancient oak
grow up to sky where I had been
then stoop to lift this broken man
in branches sure of mighty grace
and carry me up to all I’d dreamed.
As I rose on a strength not my own
the song struck the cords I’d kept
somewhere, in the soul so slow
to wake from its midnight rest.
Oh, but awake it did,
from the branch where it had hung
to swell, sing, and resound with laughter
as I became the man I’d sought.
Now, I am seven miles high
and moving higher still
with the roots of that mighty tree shot down
deep within my soul;
I take flight, live, and will finally die
in a life not my own,
drinking deep of the oak and its song
now dwelling deep in me.
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