THE JOSHUA PINE

THE JOSHUA PINE

Behind meandering hills and grassy waves, due west of I35, between Emporia and Wichita,
into the sky juts a Colorado Pine hundreds from that place where mother dropped her cone. 
How did it arrive? What beast planted this loneliness? A solitary sentence under a volatile
Kansas sky where lightening has only it to seek and twisting fury on its defiance...to focus!

Do arrowheads rusting several feet down with cartridge casings and infertile cones littering
the base around, suffering construe? No! There tall, steadfast, with trunk proud and thick
and straight - pine scents crisp are fed from below.  The prairie it sips, cool water sweet,
silently grand, humble and replete!

However, on its chest a carved tattoo: "Sarah loves Joshua"
a heart, "Feb 14, 1929"  and "Joshua loves, Sarah too."