Memoirs of a Tree

Inspired by Paul Lawrence Dunbar's. "The Haunted Oak". It gave me the chills.

Oh cross-hatched wood                                                      

Why do you weep so?

Budding flower

Do you  not see?

I am stained with innocent blood

I was carved from a wise old tree

 Made jagged to inflict pain

One unfortunate fellow had been sent to his death

His betrayal was cloaked in a kiss

With me upon his fleshly back

Treading painfully to a skull shaped mount

Men with steel faces

Stood me erect   

And nailed him to my frame
Metal crushing bone 

The  nails penetrated  his palms  and seeped into my pores

The sky went bleak

No stars shone  that night

Blood oozing onto my grain

I felt the blows as the lashes came to rest on his chest

Then the scorning and the mocking began

Their laughter and  sarcasm pranced around my weathered bark

His agony  was  comical  to  the hardened audience

Yet he uttered no curses from his blistered lips

The cadence of  his guttural groans still  resonates in my ears

What crime had he committed?

Not murder nor  theft

Only  the truth of that rejected gospel

When spoken, it irritated the ears of the masses

I became even more perplexed

When he began pleading on the behalf of  his  scorners

Asking that their  follies would be pardoned

This made me wonder

How could this man be a criminal?

Even so, his time had come

With one last breath

He was gone

And  I was left planted in that earth

Soaked with  guiltless  sweat and tears