The following poem inspired by
a book titled The Hidden Life of Trees:
What They Feel, How They Communicate
by Peter Wohlleben.
Dark clouds furrowed
what eerily resembled
strong resemblance to Neanderthal brow
(forebears of humans
who possessed an uncanny
knick knack paddy whack
give the Dog Wood a bone)
one prominent knotted
dark, circular, or patchy imperfection
formed where a branch
once attached to main trunk
and as the tree grew
layers of new wood formed
around the base
of the embedding gnarly branch node
a dense area ingrained
and perpendicular to the surrounding wood
where xylem and phloem vascular tissues
no longer formed transport system
analogous to vestigial Martian terrain,
no matter the ensuing years,
nevertheless left sticky traces,
where xylem once
transported water and minerals
upward from roots to leaves,
and provided structural support
using dead cells
and where phloem transported
food (sugars) produced by photosynthesis
from leaves to the rest
of the plant using living cells
back when strong arm tactics
left battle hymn of the republic
when copse and robbers
wrestled the wayward
antithetical bough foe gonzo
and spurious graft gone wild.
I brainstormed and patiently awaited
and suddenly experienced
eureka moment of holy cow
regarding sappy yet brilliant idea
nightmarish scenario concerning
tricky Dicky delicate touch and go crisis
required trumpeting gunboat diplomacy
(foreign policy supported
by the use or threat of military force)
which disallowed time for-rest
now looking back with disbelief
still slack-jawed how leaving
to embellish impossible mission
where fact challenged fiction
analogous to the DOW
Jones Industrial Average
wildly fluctuating up and down
still inducing occipital orbs
to grow larger as each eyebrow
rose independently of the other
after reading the following outdated
main news story
from yesteryear about me,
where my artificial smart limb
intelligent robot arm
went haywire and berserk
on an involuntary tree mend us effort
to call an impromptu conclave
(a private meeting)
to nip in the bud spring breaking spree
analogous to some radical
malcontent offshoot to be so brazen
as to self attack trunkline,
which found us rather stumped
temporarily, I a mere whipper-snapper
of a pliable stripling
became temporarily
outsmarted as only a young sapling
could weather being whipsawed
three hundred and sixty degrees
without snapping, crackling,
nor popping bark
(that would be yours truly
hell bent as proving bravado),
who played with tinker toys
as a little append-age boy,
nevertheless a veritable polymath
while still a fetus
comfortably numb ensconced in utero
amazingly enough seeded
and sprung from hearty stock,
which even when a sapling
videre licet (\"to see, it is permitted\")
flexibly \"the branching arc
of the moral universe long,
but bends toward justice\"
motto of native Australian Buloke
(Allocasuarina luehmannii)
counted his blessings
and (knock on wood) tapped
his thick wooden numbskull
just by the figurative skin of my teeth
weathered a double whammy
survived the unexpected attack intact
actually knocked some sense,
when mister Bush-Whacker
(threatened to take a Cheney saw)
attempted to cleave
(due to some axe to grind
strongly influenced by Molly Hatchet),
attempted to lop off what knob suggested
(with a little imagination) the noggin
courtesy the scheming coup d\'état,
when the sprouted fingerhut sized
superficially friendly giant size sprig
turned as fiendish foreign rogue
but thwarted lame wham bam
thank you ma\'am blade
of robotic prosthetic weapon
and just glanced off
my still green in the gills periderm
and I still possess the scarred wound
where new chutes and ladders
integrated with a webbed wide world
where now a tree grows in Brooklyn.