I ask you

How many trees does it take to make a forest?

I have four little pines started from seeds

I shook out of cones collected last fall,

Cones

I placed in the vegetable drawer of the fridge

until a few weeks ago, and now, are tiny trees

in a clay pot, here on the kitchen table.

We muse.

Is a forest a number?  A certain amount of acres?

We decide it is being in the middle of trees

and not being about to see to where they end.

Still

I call them my forest.  Whisper into their tiny trunks

words like wind, tell them how proud I am

of their small start, that I can picture them grown.

Even if

I won’t be alive when they are a forest, big enough

to get lost in. But that is never the point, is it.  It is

enough to imagine, to nurture, to hope and care for the living.

Especially, now.

When the world is for sale, its fate in the hands of men

who do not know how to care for anything but themselves.

Is it no wonder we walked to the river, want to see

How the sky

changes it color.  How the ice floats like pancakes, how this

river flows—its start small and humble, knows the power

of being, and the distance it takes to become

An ocean.

I am more river than ocean. Walking here, along the west bank

of the Mississippi, walking with a limp, my right ankle and heel

still bruised and swollen–frozen, re-learning what it takes to move.

You ask me how I am

And I tell you I’m frustrated.  That I want my life back, want

to walk–such a simple thing.  And so painful for me still.

And we do, walk, slowly, to this river, you by my side,

Each step a reminder

of what has happened, each step a step in the direction

I want to go.  Move like a river. And like the trees, know that it is

in care and nurture, not destruction, that we find strength and beauty.

Jks February 2025