Good Free Photos, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, is rendered helpless in the face of the muse that sometimes attaches to the keeper like a woodtick:
ON BEING A TREE
I wish that I could be a tree.
Gaudy now in autumn glee.
I’ll undress soon for winter sleep
And be in a coma when snow is deep.
I’ll dream of sapling days
Of being young in reckless ways.
I’ll add this year with an annual ring
Then awake with buds in the spring.
There’ll be another summer then
Of leaves and nests and good times when
Lovers come to be in my shade
And life is all a festive parade.
Only the lucky get to be a tree
The rest cycle through with plaintive plea:
“I was never a tree, but just an old grump,
So why do I feel so much like a stump?”
