The Importance of Trees

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Stopped at a red light
on Randall and San Bruno
more of a boulevard than avenue
smashing my fists into the steering wheel
sobbing like a banshee
I would be a she no longer
not without my breast
now scattered with cancer
There was no way
I could traverse the gorge
the never going to be the same
I was losing my womanhood
that I didn’t before know was about my breast
and mother and nourishment
Eyes open in terror
while blindly waiting for Stop to Go
an ancient oak tree across the wide expanse
floats into view; tall, stalwart and thickly branched
leaves of brown turning to green
its roots spreading beneath asphalt and cement
with the thought love is the life force
It is not breast or body or mother or father
ancestor or doctor or Father in the Sky
but a river flowing to and from us, and not us
With a gun pointing at your face
whether metal, cellular or the thrashing
waves of an icy sea or strait
comes the call of the clarion
as it wends its singular way across the gorge
cleaving away what does not matter,
leaving only whether to ride the river
be green leaf or brown