A (Pine) Tree

This “International Day for Biological Diversity,” I’d like to pay tribute (:>) to that concrete pine tree at the top of Session Road in Baguio City which was built in place of the real one over a decade ago (see Vincent Cabreza’s article on this @ Inquirer.net; for a couple of photos and some comments, go to phototecture).

A (Pine) Tree

(with profuse apologies to Alfred Joyce Kilmer and/or his descendants)

I think that I shall never see

A poem as concrete as a tree.

A tree whose mangled mouth is set

Against iron bars and cement;

A tree that can’t see God all day,

And too petrified to pray;

A tree that may in summer wear

A nest of soot and smog in her plastic hair;

Upon whose bosom Christmas lights lay;

Who can’t be intimate with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,

But only politicians make concrete trees.

-smsaboy, 05.08