The Live Oak

The worn trail leading past the cow fence to the pond

Lay between the live oak and the old woman's door.

To go to the fields or to the pond was to go to her.

To come back from either was to come back to her.

She sat on a lawn chair in the shade on bare dirt.

She talked as she looked out at the blinding light

That seared the grass in the open field beyond

The leaves and the shadow.

She watched as cars beyond the grass slowed at the break where

Paved road yielded to grated clay and sand.

The boy sat in a chair she kept ready by her own

As she told stories. Once he asked about the oak,

Was it alive? "Yes!" she said, "And always talking,

Always swapping tales and gossip with the wind."

Eyes dancing wildly over a smile, she wondered.

"I wonder what that old tree knows on you?"

Another time she told him the name of god.

The boy and the old woman talked in the long heat,

Listening to the chorus of bugs and frogs calling

For the night as the afternoon stretched the shadows.

Then the live oak took a breath, small and sighing. Another.

Then it reached out and up and swept down the breeze

from the retreating sky. The oak swayed

As it sang softly whispered lullabies of cool nights,

Songs of bright stars. It psalmed dew-soaked grass.

It promised the morning. And then morning again.