I learned this week from my reading
on the shadow that each person has an invisible
tree growing inside, making the kind
of progress that needs to be made no matter
what is happening on the outside.
And if a person goes long enough
without looking to that tree, well,
that’s when you get
nailed to it.
This makes me want to learn
all the shapes of all the leaves
and the names of trees and to take
a pen-and-ink drawing class so my hand
might know as well as my head about all the choices
a tree can make.
It makes me want to drive
over to the grade school in early October
and walk the sidewalks home with first-grade eyes,
on the lookout always for sugar maples, fiery orange leaves
still tinged with green, the trees’ hands outstretched,
splayed, burning to tell me what all I don’t know
about my story on the inside.