My Left One

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You are a spruce tree.

Do you know of the impending weather?

A snowstorm capable of burying you and all the shrubs

Is on its way.

How will you deal with that?

Are you prepared?  Of course you are. 

You look around, disgusted,

At what the people call a "green space".

Just a tiny plot of grass and weeds,

In the middle of an urban forest.

Automobiles and buses drive past you.

Moving people constantly breeze by.

Most never look at you,

The ones who do imagine how you might appear

In their homes, dead,

And covered with colorful plastic items.

How can they miss your simple beauty? 

The evergreen.

How beautiful is a maple, or an oak,

Next to you and your kin?

In this winter when they are bare of leaves,

And shed any pretention at being green.

You look around.

There are several of these broadleaves

Within shouting distance,

If you could shout.

Every spring, they open up their huge leaves,

Soaking up all of your rain, your sunshine and air.

Their gluttony makes them rich with color in the summer,

And then bare and lifeless in the winter.

Their wide leaves make them vulnerable.

They cannot handle a sudden frost,

Or a drowning monsoon.

The wind tears at their branches,

Ripping their clothing away,

They cannot support themselves in times of trouble.

They could never survive the harsh northern winters

In your homeland.

A spruce, you stand on your plot of land,

Waiting to be removed,

When you become too large to prune.

You cannot flex your branches as you would in the north.

But that doesn't stop these ravenous broadleafs. 

They know nothing of moderation.

Every spring, they stretch their impatient limbs

And begin to breathe in the air,

Even in the filthy city, they spread and grow like weeds.

The people think they are pretty.

But what do they know?

Pretty is the lone spruce.

Through the harsh winter and torrid summers,

The spruce thrives.

Never shedding its needles all around,

Never breaking in the wind.

It never loses its color,

And never takes more than its share.

It is stability.

You are such a tree, waiting patiently for each day,

To thrive or suffer, but never showing your concern.

You survive, strong, and never waver from your path,

Which is to grow, and be green, all year long.

Let the weeds shoot and speed through their short lives.

They are not spruce trees.

You are a spruce tree.

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About this Poem

While waiting for the bus one day, I spoke to the lone spruce that stood on the green in the square (of course not aloud!).

The storm did come, and the tree endured, but this was years ago. Hopefully, it is still there.