Everyday Canvas

The Oak Tree

Prompt: Write a poem about a tall mountain or a tall tree.
Let's take the tall tree or tall mountain and create a story with one or both of them as characters. I know you're creative, you live in Blog City. So, bring them alive.

========.

If it weren’t for the starling’s song, I wouldn’t tilt my head up and observe how tall the old oak was. I smiled as its branches jiggled when the bird flew off it with couple more of its kind following. Then, I took a deep breath of the sweet, fresh air and felt the caress of the breeze, so slight that I might have imagined it.

“As long as this oak lives, the spirits tied to it will look over us,” said my young companion, Chanise, her lips curved up. She was the daughter of the cook in the B&B we were staying.

I winced. “Spirits?”

Chanise caught my glance and bit her lower lip. “Yup, they are with the Father and they are with us at the same time. That’s what my Ma says.”

“Oh!” I said, feeling emptied of any answers. This was my first time visiting the Southern Appalachia and I didn’t know much about the local beliefs.

Chanise was in her early teens but almost as tall as me. She shook her tightly curled hair and smiled shyly, her eyes shining like black agates. I noticed the many colors reflected on her dusky brown skin as if a mirror would of its environs. How beautiful she is! I thought. She looked like an ancient princess with her loose-fitting dress falling straight off her shoulders to her ankles. She moved to the side of the tree, curving her arm around its trunk in a somewhat protective touch.

“How do you know this tree has spirits?” I asked.

“Look over there, yonder,” she said, pointing to the forest at the foot of the closest mountain. I squinted, taking in the sight of the range of the majestic Blue Mountains.

”See all those trees?” After I nodded, Chanise continued. “Those bunch together. This here tree is standing alone. You know why? It’s because of the people hanged on it.”

Suddenly startled, I exclaimed, “Oh, but that’s so terrible!”

“Ma says my great grandpa was hanged on it, too. For stealing a chicken, which he didn’t do.”

Seeing the shock on my face, she took a few steps near me. “No more,” she said. “Folks don’t do stuff like that no more.”

Of course! She was talking of the lynchings. I had read about those.

“Thank God!” I said, lifting my eyes up again to the oak, standing loftily like a statue dressed in a heavy coat of emerald leaves and casting feverish shadows from its painful past.


The Oak Says

Something in me, I never mention
as I hold my head up high,
yet with fear and frayed nerves,
and I lose myself in a mirror
far-away in centuries
under the haunting
of the moon.

For my green is tinged with red
against the faded marks of rope
circling around my ancient bark
while I grieve my fate and
lament the past
as if some invalid
begging for forgiveness
for this torn world.