A Use for Ours

Oliver, who tended toward depression –
and who’d (in his most recent therapeutic session)
been advised he needed more than talk –
thought he’d take a walk.

There wasn’t much to see
except a not unfriendly tree
that he remembered from his past.
“That’s the sort of friendship that might last,”

he softly said. But when he found it, it was dead.
Disconsolate, he lay his melancholy head
against its cold unfeeling hide,
and closed his eyes, and cried.

He therefore didn’t see the transformation
he’d effected through the strange relation
that his tears had instantaneously had
with all the tree’s insentient roots. “Sad”

was what the dead tree understood.
Anxious stress enlivened its gray wood
to healthy brown: invoked its host –
a thirsty chartreuse vegetative ghost

who had been waiting for this melancholy kiss
(he’d grown so tired of canine piss).
Perky little green leaves shot
up from the morbid rain (he cried a lot)

and Oliver felt something change within.
He looked down, felt he saw something like kin! –
or anyway, a use for his great sorrow.
Perhaps we’ll find a use for ours, tomorrow.


 
 
 
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