Last year I bought a potted palm tree at the beginning of Lent and by Easter, it had one frond left. I can kill a houseplant at a glance. Had to get some new plants for Pentecost. At first they looked like they’d never lost a leaf in their lives—healthy, vibrant specimens! Now they’re rather honest looking life forms. They bear the color green as if it were a tentative hue, subject to change at any moment. They look like they’ve experienced stress. They look like me! Most of them are in rehab. at my mother-in-law’s house.
And now we enter, yet again, into the season of Lent. I find Biblical trees very interesting subjects. They play characters unto themselves though are largely unrecognized, from the Tree of Knowledge, to the sycamore Zacchaeus climbed, to the tree upon which Jesus hung. If in the beginning was the word and the word was God, then trees were the most damned race of beings ever invented. Maybe if we go to Hell we grow up as a tree, the fodder of flame. Or maybe we’ve made a huge error of printing medium. Probably we were supposed to use stone as God did for the Ten Commandments. Probably that’s what the eleventh commandment said: “Thou shalt use rocks on which to build My laws.” Rock, paper, scissors? Ah, metal. Wasn’t it Joseph Smith of the Latter Day Saints who had the tablets of gold? When I get to Heaven (if) then I shall open the bedside drawer and see what stationary the Gideons have left.
AA In Boston
14 years ago
2 comments:
Have you every considered giving up cantelope for Lent rather than continuing botanical homicide?
I have given up all melons on a lifetime basis, watermelon to honeydew and everything in between and surrounding because they all taste like cucumbers to me and I do not care for cucumbers, except, of course, as pickles. Now if you could find a pickle jar large enough to hold a good old Florida watermelon, then, perhaps, I might consider breaking my melon fast.
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