walking

I walked without direction today,
palms upturned towards the grey, drizzling sky.
I passed people on the puddly sidewalks,
avoiding eye contact and feigning interest in
the cold, grey pavement.
Emily Dickinson, I remembered then, was a people-hating hermit, wasn’t she?

The leaves had gone, and the trees reached up towards the sky as if to say,
come, rain.

But I know another reason they reach up, (though I won’t stop people on the street to tell them. They don’t seem interested, anyway.
And I am a hermit.)
Each spindly spiney branch had a set of its own sharp twig-like protrusions.
Every bit of the tree reaching. Every bit.

And it reminded me that not every bit of me is reaching.
The lazy bits are satisfied to dangle and sway depending on where I and the wind take them.

I saw a sideways tree, too. Growing out of the ground at a 60 degree angle
and I thought this tree grew where it was planted and didn’t ask permission.

Would that I were a tree
and didn’t have to ask, may I grow, may I reach, may I be stripped bare of everything and yet still try?