Bigleaf Maple, Acer macrophyllum, near Ravenna Park, Seattle. Credit: Walter Siegmund, CC BY-SA 3.0
A deep breath.
Someone is baking.
They’ve opened their window
to let the caramelly, yes,
—but slightly burnt—
scent be carried on the
rain-washed wind.
The same wind that only washed
the western half of the big pine’s bark,
the half infringed by the Bigleaf Maple
whose big leaves are only buds,
promises of chlorophylled summer days,
when the upstart deciduous will steal the sun
from the ancient gymnosperm,
who leans East,
its biceps thick and brawny,
curving loops of bark and lignin,
its ever-present needles stocked with tannins,
dry and bitter,
opening to puffy, prickly umbrellas
against the morning’s storm,
which blew in from the West
and dropped the maple’s short-lived flowers,
lanky, wispy things,
pale yellow-green,
all stem and stamen,
anthers swollen and spent,
having already put forth its pollen,
the spring sex,
advertising its desires to the world,
desires to live, and live again,
and recombine, and become new.
And while the wind may only plaster
this tree’s blooms to the windshield
of the gray Honda parked beneath it,
or spread a carpet of spent maple sex
beneath my feet,
this tree has made its desires known,
which no passing chickadee or
passenger plane can deny.
Certainly, the encroached-upon pine
cannot deny it,
cannot deny the wispy maple-flowers
plastered to its flanks,
a love note
passed between two trees
whose evolutions diverged long before them,
and while this arboreal-love-that-cannot-be
will never bear fruit,
the impatient crows cannot deny it
and so I will be its witness,
and so I will be its memory.
