Clare McCullough

Poetry

Tree

When the conditions are right

Love grows like trees do

building itself out of light

And air

And water

Its hands plunging into the dark soil

When it is still only an acorn

In its rayless hole

With no mind to guide it upwards

it reaches for the sun

Then, particles of light

Fall onto the green

Shaky leaves

which

exhale oxygen

But

People forget to tell you that,

As the love grows

it changes

From that smooth sapling

Into a wide,

tree

With roots that seem to reach

The center of the earth

The bark thickens

And the tree’s growth

creates the stretch marks

Criss-crossing its surface

Your tree is no longer smooth

No longer young

But the scars

In the scars you can

See all that eaten light

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