Leavings
The day he left,
the neighbors finally chopped down
the tree in their yard.
I stood in our terrace wondering
why it all seemed brighter, imagining
it was his leaving.
When I realized the dead tree
was gone, I wanted suddenly
to know what kind
of tree it was.
Pine? Agojo?
No way to tell because
it was already black
and leafless when we moved in.
I had asked him whether
it was still a tree,
when all that remained
was its trunk and one branch –
an accusing finger.
How happy I was
for the tree that day, freed
from pretending it was
a post, a hanger, a tree;
unlike the kamias in Pasay,
sucked of green by mother’s
dendrobiums wrapped around its trunk;
or the acacia, forlorn in Pampanga,
all its branches overtaken by ferns,
fooling even the sparrows
with the trompe l’oeil.
They haunt me, these trees
that are not trees. Their brave stance,
the rootedness despite the loss
of what I thought should matter:
“Green, green,” as Lorca sang.
A year later, in Davao,
in my garden that plays host
to the wayward branches
of the neighbor’s fruit-heavy makopa,
I recall an old lesson –
how the core of a tree needs to die
to keep the life flowing between leaf and root;
how the annual rings emanate
from this death;
how the part that remains
when all life is stripped
is called
heartwood.
