I never noticed this tree before.
Was it always here?
Look how huge it is. Even the upper
branches are as thick around as grown
men, strongmen in a circus with thigh-thick arms
holding up the canopy. You can’t
miss this tree and yet
I think I have been missing it everyday
for years, driving past it on my way to work
without seeing it. Now my car is
running quietly over there where
I pulled over because this tree
was standing here where I never
saw it. I see it now though. I see it all
now—how I couldn’t see before because
of the understory, all those stories I was telling myself
were true, all the grasping and the wanting
and the dying. But now I think
there must have been something dead inside of me
if I couldn’t see this tree. It’s so
beautiful I want to die. I want to
live differently. I want to take this tree
back to my car, back into my life, keep it
always in view. But of course that’s impossible.
That would be as impossible as this tree itself
being here and yet not being here.
Which is why I can’t stop staring at it.

© by Paul Hostovsky.
Used with the author’s permission.