The Lonely Tree

The lonely tree sits in vast mundane,

A lone metaphor for one’s own isolated pain.

Forsaken by one who planted its seed in longing quiet fain,

Where the only nightly friend is the soft, whispering rain.

But the lonely tree does not mind the absence of other’s sallow vain,

He rejoices by growing out such long roots like veins,

That clutch lands far and wide till they reach the tracks of the train,

And his branches weep down like an old mane’s cane.

Till upon one day a house was built on his quiet lane,

And his leaves suffocated against the window pane,

As deep pipes blocked his roots reign,

‘Tis true that every year they trimmed his green mane.

So he shook his leaves and from his branches drained,

Cold water onto the children’s toys like paper planes,

But when they climbed his trunk, tugging on twigs like reins,

He often wondered if people too had a tree-like brain.

And he thought, “Maybe one day my roots and branches will wane,

“And I will wilt and return to my lonely plain.”

Poem by Lucy Matisse