The Givers

The Givers

That shade of green on the cover
Haunting
Like face paint green
In October, late
(Oh how I hate the wanna-be witches’ then)
Haunting, like so many books penned for children
Intended for the young ones
But, wait, it is we who are grown, who are or
Were the audience, all along
The souls who hunger for the messages of these books

That Giving Tree green
Cat calls from the shelf and says read me again and again
Soak up the
Metaphor on every page
Like communion bread dipped into crumb-filled wine

Memories are fickle
Holey like wormwood

Memory takes me to the story of the tree
And the boy
And the man
And the taking stirs me in ghostly ways

The paper-puncher holes in my own flawed memory
Fail to recall
Did the boy say a word
Was it only the tree
Oh what a story he would tell
Of his all-about-me-self
Taking the tree down to a stump

As green as that storybook cover
So sad is my soul for the boy, the man
I see myself in that boy
And want to be like the tree

And so I write
Poetry

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peace and grace,

e