In the Presence of Greatness

IV. The Diving Post

Lone and jutting from the wave brushed sea

I waited long for him to climb up me.

Once a summer he’d make a single trip

To my lonely beach to take a dip.

He would swim a hundred feet from shore

To take a single dive and not one more.

III. The Pier Column

Barnacled, I raised my load so light

In my row I stood so true and right

And once a month she’d be coming down

To the coast by this fast dying town.

She’d walk the planks past me down to the end

And watch the sea pass by just like a friend.

II. The Evergreen

A blaze of green I stood so proud and tall

Until that day when my turn came to fall.

A man came with an eye patch and a brace

And looked at me with sun upon his face.

He felled me there, in land becoming stark

And took off his glove to touch my gnarled bark.

I. The Sapling

Awake with waiting till my time would come

To be between his finger and his thumb

And from his bag of forest he grabbed me

To place me in the soil to form a tree.

Upon a stump nearby, he sat to eat

And shed some silent tears into his meat.

V. The Carving

Now I stand upon a shelf austere

With memories in moments through the years.

She found me there along the beach one day

A chunk of driftwood, weathered, dried and grey.  

She carved and whittled something out of me,

Something always waiting for her to see.