Hey, Climb a Tree – a poem by Russell Rowland

Hey, Climb a Tree

Grey squirrel hunches up and up
the corrugated oak,
wee claws clinging tight as burrs.

A nuthatch does it upside-down
and backward.  Even

the twenty-pound porcupine
can get its bulk and ordnance
into the foliage,

where it stoically outwaits
grounded predators.  Even a bear,

when you and I are near.

Jesus, beneath a mustard tree,
branches harboring hatchling nests,
told still another parable—

of a sanctuary citadel
for the littlest, the lost, the least—
vast as that overspreading tree.

He held out one of the very sort
of seed from which it grew,

so tiny the myopic couldn’t see.

Seven-time Pushcart Prize nominee Russell Rowland writes from New Hampshire’s Lakes Region, where he has judged high-school Poetry Out Loud competitions.  His work appears in Except for Love: New England Poets Inspired by Donald Hall (Encircle Publications), and Covid Spring, Vol. 2 (Hobblebush Books). His latest poetry book, Magnificat, is available from Encircle Publications.