The Leader and the Tree

The Leader And The Tree

  

I always knew I was a tree. When I was planted, nobody knew me. Somehow, it had to come to be. So I started to feel my way around. It felt like groping in the darkness. The further I reached, the darker it became. I'm not sure I knew what I was doing, but deep down I knew I was a tree.

 

I had to keep this up until I came to sense a temperature difference that enabled me to define some form of direction. In one direction, I got the energy to grow stronger in the other I used up the energy. It just seemed the right thing to do. I had to keep going in two different directions, but deep down I always knew I was a tree.

 

I remember the day the ground gave way. It required great effort on my part, but nobody really thought much of it. Nobody noticed the movement of the earth. It was like an awakening and for the first time in my life, I could see, me. I don't think I looked like what I thought I was, but I didn't know what I was to be. But deep down I knew I was a tree.

 

A brief assessment of the environment and I knew there was nothing special about me. Everyone out there was green. Well at least I was the correct color. I think. There was so much competition for something up there, they quickly forgot about me. That thing up there, the sun. It was not a bad Idea, the competition, I mean, but I always knew deep down that I was a tree.

 

It was not that I tried harder than the rest but I guess I was different. As Time passed I worked on my chest. Standing up a few feet, I could tell that some would only be bushes at best and maybe that was okay. I just had this nagging feeling that I was a tree and kept wondering what that could be.

 

Finally, I thought that if I was a tree then there must be some like me. But when I tried, I saw some trunks that convinced me that I just could not be. It was a hard time for me.

 

I was concerned about what would be, but too many things occupied my time during those years. I remember the first time I began to bear fruit and maybe that convinced me that I was a tree. It was one of those earth-moving events. I had to give up what I could not hold. Try as I might it was not mine to keep. I felt like I was dying. It took me a long time to agree that I must give it up for free. Yet that did not stop me from growing. At that time, I noticed, there were fewer and fewer like me, yet we all seemed to focus our attention on that spot up there. The sun. It took all our energy to get a good view, well most of our energy. As I grew, I reached out, to others. The best part of those times was blooming. It was fascinating to see how much attention I could get from my spread. I think that is when I began to believe that I was a tree.

 

I often wondered what this experience meant. Straining upward, reaching outward and blooming, flowering and fruiting where I was planted. Then I looked down and saw what I had been and I was convinced that, in time, there would be another like me, if only I remained a tree. I always knew I was a tree only I never knew what a tree could be. Might you be a tree?

 

A poem by Allan Bukusi, 5/2/2003