Oaks

No one can love you enough.

Untitled (1942) by Leonora Carrington

I want to be outside with the tallest oak trees, who whisper to me

No one can love you enough for your taste.

I want to disagree but they interrupt to say

That’s how we are, too. No one adores us the way we deserve to be adored. No one marvels at our magnificence, the broad stretch of our branches into the sky. No one sits and watches us for hours, the way we move, the way we reach, no one looks closely enough to notice that we’re still growing, still expanding, wider and taller every day.

No one gives us credit for the way we throw sunlight around like bright gems scattered across the ground, we make a painting out of the sun and erase it, again and again, we try again and again to make it better, more delirious, more hypnotic, to seduce these strange repetitive beasts beneath us. Maybe we catch their attention for a second, but then

they move on, to something more predictable: a strobe light, a disco ball, dead end words, pointless puzzles, good and bad they say with conviction as if the world can be cut in half and labeled clearly, right and wrong they say with feeling, assigning each other roles, shouting at the shouting on their tiny screens.

No one will honor the worlds you conceal under your branches, beneath your bark, throughout your soft core, the teeming universe of your trunk, a bustling liquid city. No one will feel enough even when they’re touching you, they might as well be alone, they don’t know what real curiosity tastes like, they don’t glide silently through the night, or turn the sun on with intention, to watch you patiently, the way you move through rings of shadow and light, the way you breathe in their sorrows, the way you honor the bustling cities inside of them, the ones they can’t see or feel. They claim that they understand completely, but then

they move on, to something more predictable: an actor or a nurse or a magician’s assistant, someone who will climb into a box and lie still, murmuring cut me into little squares. That’s purity to them: the empty performance of surrender, the trick mirror of passive consent, the feigned innocence of a white dove trapped in a silk handkerchief, breathing shallowly, determined to remain as placid as death.

But outside the storm is rushing in and

like you, we’re dancing but no one is watching and

like you, we’ll sway and stretch and start over, trying for something more gratifying, more suspenseful, more frightening, but these beasts don’t care for improvisation, they don’t notice foreshadowing, they don’t see these omens in the towering clouds, still growing, still expanding, wider and taller every second, they don’t crack open the windows to hear the sound of 300 million volts splintering the pines, a loblolly skyscraper felled, an entire world torn to shreds, scattering butterflies and moths for miles, sending beetles and bats in search of somewhere new to shelter.

They don’t feel love for these small creatures, scrambling and improvising, how soft and sweet they look from up here, the way they move through rings of shadow and light, never giving up, wandering with sick hearts or curled into tiny balls under the leaves, praying for the slightest shimmer of sunshine through the canopy, to tell them they’re not alone.

How can you be loved enough by beasts who, when you aren’t performing innocence or emptiness, see you as a pest?

No one can love you enough. Build a shelter for the flies and the wasps instead. Make houses for the rats and the owls and the bluebirds. Sit for hours in the shade and watch how these tiny citizens move, floating or drifting or scrabbling over stones, swooping or creeping in rings of shadow, rings of light. Make space inside your liquid heart for the dark rings of harsh winters, and the light rings of the cool springtimes and scorching summers. You have so many seasons left to celebrate the fact that no one can love you enough, to relish these warm rains from your eyes, to grow so tall and wide that one day, you’ll barely be able to see them, down there on the ground

and you’ll hardly remember how it felt to care so much about something so predictable: a strobe light, a disco ball, dead end words, pointless mazes, young and old they used to say with conviction, hot and cold, pretty and ugly, winning and losing

never realizing that

losing is never witnessing the improvisation of dry leaves floating and diving erratically to the ground, and

ugly is never noticing the romance of brown thrashers kicking up dust, of monarchs flexing their wings, of vultures drawing wide rings in the air, their shadows swirling in circles across the grass, and

old is never feeling this city of tiny lunatics thriving inside your own living cells.

And then at last

you will marvel at your own

magnificence.

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