Does the tree knit together into a neat picture of life when branches broke off and leaves foliate the roadside into palettes of yellow-brown-greens unintended but nonetheless 

taken by pedestrians and urbanites to slide along in their newly seasoned vehicles: “look, I took a memory of what we’ll do again next autumn” some things will never change as mistaking cliches for the good life

Does the tree flip on its side and show its underbelly when veneered into that couch to pouch on as a bag of past virility 

and the calling of brevity of stride bent to the longevity of a crutch and stride of a walking stick postponing the cane into the grave 

Does the tree ring a year around its waste when eye-bags appeared and chests sagged 

relentlessly climbing downwardly as roots to death. 

periods are made of wood or ash spread across the soil of cycle not change. And yet there we are not the same while encroaching communal dust 

Does the tree freeze when winter is upon it 

as the mind’s breezes between birth and that circulated last breath over and set in repeat

Even at that last moment he taketh and does not give it; he breaks the bread, the cane, the sled and kisses the wooden floor he decades had tread 

Does my tree, planted at birth, and hashed to utility across a life time, remember me diffidently when our frost already set in?

—animasuri’22

perverted note-taking of Rothman, J. (2022, Oct 3). Are You The Same Person You Used To Be? In Annals of Inquiry, The New Yorker. Print edition October 10, 2022.

thank you for the hint Dr. WSA