You were some sort of sleight-of-hand magician,
and I still haven’t figured out
all of the tricks you pulled, a tribute
to the level of your artistry.
You may have seen me as your assistant,
we two tending the garden
where only vines twist now
about the trunks, philodendron,
sick loving vine of trees,
makes it so they struggle
constricted in their growth.
That gardener you were,
planting our grove,
the place where we’ve stuck together,
a couple of stunted trees
sheltering each other, sort of
mostly you me, sometimes,
standing grown bent up
as best we can be straight,
those rings of ours, you know,
those counting up each year,
so our rounded time flies,
a record of all the hard weather
we endured, each ring a year
we acquired dearly.
The old saw, even at half, you were a mighty oak.
It’s hard to picture you as an acorn,
before you took on your cloak and wand.
Remember that night,
how we kept passing the Daks Motel?
We were searching for the Oaks Motel,
but their sign was carved out trickily –
and then voila, out of nowhere
it came to you in the dark,
appeared we’d read it wrong,
as I now read you, sort of,
so difficult to figure out
all that made your magic
seem so magical to me.
Note: This is my rough draft for Thursday 12.28.23
Lanning Lee 