Rooted and Growing Slow (prose poetry)

“Befriend a tree,” she said. 

Participation in the oddity was not questioned. But I did wonder. I wondered, how will I form a friendship in a strange place for a short period of time? Won’t the process of befriending take time, like lots of time? And what if the tree doesn’t want to be my friend? 

You see, friendship is like that. You walk up, glance the gnarly limbs twisting this way and that, and think, it’s not the best looking one around, but it should do. Even friendship with a tree is based on what I can see. I stood there and looked at the tree. It seemed lonely, like me. 

I didn’t know if this tree would love me back, ask me questions, consider my heartache, and celebrate the joys of life. But I did know, if I befriend this tree, where to find it. And that should count for something. 

The tree I asked to be my friend didn’t really have a choice and that felt a bit uncomfortable to me. But when I reminded my soon-to-be friend it had been planted in a hotel parking lot and most of their potential friends would be travelers, I think it relented. 

Or maybe the tree, small and leafless in a land of pines, appreciated the story I told. 

I said to it, “I may not be a tree but one time Creator spoke to me and told me I was a tree.” And I really think the tree, who I guess I would say had become my friend, understood. 

When I got to the part of the story where Creator told me to recite, “I am a tree… rooted, and growing slow,” I felt the short, scraggly tree nod. But when I told my friend about how I heard Creator speak, they waved their branches in praise. 

That part of the story went like this: It was the end of a year, some year beset with highs and lows as diverse as the Ketchikan weather where I met my newest friend. And it was the end of a year when I began to wonder what the next year might hold. Who might I become? What should I accomplish, resoluting my way to a better me? 

But then Creator spoke. 

And by spoke I mean without a voice from the outside but with a voice beneath. I heard this voice in my depths, rumbling below my well manicured surface. It was there that the roots of myself intertwined with the roots of God, an invisible network of intimate communication. The message was undeniable, so much so that I have recited it to myself the many years since I encountered it. 

As I told the story, the tree, my most permanent friend, swayed as if I was hush singing a lullaby. And perhaps I was. My message from Creator had already been a message, spoken from the literal heart of a tree, fashioned under the ground, twisted around what makes them live, for my friend replied back to me, the one time they tangled their roots with mine: 

“I am a tree… rooted, and growing slow.”