Twisted Tree

A Poem I found lurking in the notebooks

Hiking in the orange embers of sunset 

night falling on us like a sudden storm

we came upon a twisted tree. 

The trunk started out straight

but soon bowed in a hairpin curve

before it returned to reaching upward. 

It looked like it was dodging a thrown fist

just missed

and frozen forever cringing. 

My mom, who knows about these things, said:

it must have grown up around something hard

that isn’t there anymore

and held that shape forever. 

I took out my little journal

balanced it on my palm

and made a portrait of the silhouette

Until darkness pronounced it done. 

Home, I put the journal on the shelf with the others:

flattened forests of footnotes

explaining, exploring, revealing

lines as twisted as the slither of a river

trying to find the path of least resistance

shaped by struggle.  

I’ve worked around the hard things

their oppressive presence pressing in

until the negative space created portraits of them. 

I’ve drawn paths as crooked 

as broken bones re-grown

traced memories that ache in my mind. 

Art isn’t made of the straight and the perfect.

In a forest full of trees

I drew the most twisted one I could find.