Tall as a Cypress

Taller men, in general, want petite women
(to bolster their egos),
but something went off in the construction of me,

some mis-soldered wiring perhaps,
when I was only a project in God's heavenly factory plants,
touring the conveyor assembly line

beneath those sky-blue, diamond-cross-braced ceilings,
with only an arm and a leg screwed into place
when my mother decided to have unprotected,

Pope-ordained sex with her Uniformed husband
in anti-Catholic Kentucky territory,
all to give birth to a great wood-pile of baby

eight long months later, after two days of labor,
because, in the end, I was born a tall, gangling cypress
grown outside Avellino by a Franciscan monastery

and felled in the Year of Our Lord 1482
for much-needed firewood during one especially cold winter.
I lived and I died providing shade for that monastery,

watching two centuries of monks come and go
from the crest of the road that hemmed in their gardens.
My ankles were slashed and I fell to the earth,

and my trunk was cut open and my limbs were hacked off.
My ribs were hung over the hearth in the great hall,
while the rest of me was stacked up out in the yard.

Being, as I was, torn asunder, my mind turned to splinters,
and a part of my whole desired a weedy genius
who'd serenade me with glowing talk of the universe,

while the rest of my mulch longed for a bodybuilder
who'd hold me close in the flex of his arms.
I developed these desires from watching the peasants,

strong-armed and broad-backed, toiling in the fields,
and hearing the monks, swathed in their dark robes, preaching
their sermons with learning and eloquence.

I was capable of conscious thought, as all trees are,
yet rooted in spot, unable to speak, ever-silent beneath
the stars of cold nights, so I was quite glad

when I was finally felled, and my life cut short by the monks
in their need. I've always longed to be closer to God,
and I've always wanted to be of use toward others.

I was not holy, but the monks were ever fond of my shade,
so when the Robed felled me I was given pride of place,
and two of my branches were saved, and blessed sacred.

And, as the rest of me burned in their stoves,
my ribs heard their prayers through my cousin the rood screen.
Throughout all the centuries I've hung in their great hall,

providing them shade in the cool and damp air.
My mother knew of my shade as well, in her youth,
but she left for America, and forgot all about me.

Mostly, I just want a man who is taller than me,
to censer my name with the smoke of his prayer.

Published by Impossible Archetype, Issue #16, August 2024
---posted 9/25/2024