Reciprocity – a poem by Chris Fafard

Reciprocity

There's a tree we greet when we visit the marsh, 
an old multi stemmed maple made chaotic 
by time and more than a few storms. 
I always place my hand, in passing, 
on its weary trunk and rest a moment 
in communion with this disheveled veteran. 

The things it has seen, the winds and rains punctuated 	
by the occasional drought year when the marsh 
bled dry, when strange plants grew tall for a time 
and went to seed. The generations of egrets, gangs 
of muskrats waxing and waning, the forest succeeding 
itself at the marsh edge where the land rises just a bit. 

All these, yes, and stories too beyond the notice 
of fast things like me, are captured deep in its record 
of rings and in the shared memory of trees.
The maple knows I touch it; a moment of shared 
sentience. I – mobile and fleet of foot and thought; 
and it – stable and watching and thus wise. 

This week under my touch the old tree felt electric, 
like never before. The pulse of its living near stung 
my hand. I feel that charge still and my leaves fall 
in poetry, sere and curled but necessary. I am 
marked, in whatever passes for rings in me, 
by maple’s lightning and the fecundity of marsh.

 

Chris Fafard is a poet and photographer and perennial student. He is learning to see beauty at the intersection of the created and the creating. He has published poems in local Mid-Atlantic publications (The Mid Atlantic Review, Maryland Bards, Saint Andrews Episcopal annual journals), and is now working to expand his reach. He and his wife Maria live in Annandale, Virginia.