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The Deep Wound

I’m going to a cabin

Somewhere

To write

Haiku

And drink coffee

While removing the bullets

From too many years of

Losing myself

In the unimportant.

It will take years

To heal the deep wound

Of missing the first snowfall

On the lone cedar.

   —

The Backstory

I grew up in a country house in New Jersey with a cedar tree overlooking the driveway. The tree was there when I waited for the school bus, or sold lemonade to motorists out for a Sunday drive. When I changed schools and lost bus service, I walked home along a winding road until I saw the tree–I’d run that last 100 yards as if I were scoring a touchdown. When I started driving, I noticed the tree was thinning. Then came college followed by the military draft–I lost complete contact with the tree. It wasn’t until I moved to California that I began to miss its branches and reddish glow. About 12 years ago I wrote The Deep Wound after my brother and I visited the house we once lived in with, of course, the cedar tree standing guard over the driveway. I recently took a Google virtual tour of the country road leading to the tree, only it wasn’t there. Found out the owners wanted a wider driveway–the tree was removed. The above photo isn’t the cedar tree from my childhood–in its place, The Deep Wound.