IMOGENE’S NOTEBOOK

My Skyline Is the Trees

A poem

I wanted to live in the woods. I wanted to know what it meant to be a tree, to be one with the leaves as they danced upon the wind, which came and went as it pleased, without a thought for me or whether it would be missed, not caring if it would be back again.

I wanted to sleep beneath the stars. I wanted my only light to be the moon, to know what it was to love someone who could never love me, and with whom the excuse of distance might finally be legitimate.

I wanted to turn my back to the city. I wanted to forget the unforgiving skyscrapers that punched a hole in each sunrise and littered my days with recklessness and noise and pain.

So much pain.

I wondered what it would be like to have a one-way conversation with a squirrel and to watch a deer gently pick its way through the underbrush, knowing I couldn’t possibly follow.

I wanted to know a place. I wanted to call it home, only now, everyone looks at me and sees the trees I long for, saying such a pity she didn’t just see someone or start taking pills.

Should I mention I think the same things about them? Feel the same pity and sorrow, knowing they face identical tomorrows, and say if only they had gone to the trees, if only they had closed their eyes for a moment and let their troubles be carried away on the wind.