Outside my home stands a black oak tree over a hundred years old. Only guests who compliment it are invited back. Inside my home there’s a lot of music, a meditation room where the bedroom ‘belongs’ and 238 pounds of Boos maple on cinder blocks at Japanese table height. The latest guest regaled both tree and table and is thus forever welcome.

A second tree that lived a shorter life was interfering with something, I don’t remember what, and my plant-loving landlord uprooted it. The remains were broken and left alongside our recycling last week.
Walking past I wondered where its soul went, in my inner voice.

Trees of different ages all around.
Friends change form,
waving, overlapping,
leaves in the late-afternoon.