Pine Trees Sleep Standing Up--Blog Entry #4

Sunday, February 17, 2013

3:00pm

21˚F

"They slept standing"

Everyone collapses into sleep differently. The living let their bodies bend into crescent moons. Let their eyes shutter and sway until they close into the dark and flooded basins of their wilted moon bodies. The living let themselves shine through the black swells of their bedrooms, let themselves lay still and static among the stars. The living let their bodies lose control, let them be limp, be vulnerable to all that is still awake. The living sleep when their bodies are too tired to hold the weight, to hold the happiness, the pain. The living sleep to escape, to dream, to not feel the burden of the world’s dark.  

"their throats curved against the other's rump"

Pine trees in this cemetery sleep standing up. Day or night their bodies are built for it. The girth of them, the immense weight they hold would never survive curved or bent. Their barked throats need to be open, to feel the wind rush at their hollowed chests like a bird careening into a window. They need to know their power, to be alert, to never give in like humans to the world’s dark. These pine trees are good at disguising their rest. Right when you think you have caught them in a deep sleep, when you think you could capture their lifelessness in your delicate eyes, they rustle their stout limbs into the sky. They whine and howl as if their russet hearts were to break right through their timber bodies.

"They breathed against each other,

whinnied and stomped"

Pine trees in this cemetery are the protectors; the giant spirit warriors that spread their green branch over the dead like the sky veils the living with her one blue limb. They are here to shadow the dead, to be a second skin to their grave. On this cold day, my living body needs protecting. I choose to sit under an eastern white pine. He is a big body compared to my small body and he knows it. As our forms touch, his bark rubbing against mine, I feel a part of the protecting, that our bodies are one tall warrior timber. I feel my spirit, my moon, leap from my chest and reach through him like an unstoppable vein until I reach his eyes.

From this height I see everything. I see myself so far below fragile and beaten. I see the other pines in a deep earthly concentration. I see them surveying the cemetery for something I cannot see or hear or understand. I see my uncle’s grave and the shadow that penetrates him from the limb of a young pine. I wonder if he can feel her, if he can feel her one limb protecting him. At this height I cannot see what the pines are shielding the dead from. I wonder if they are guarding them from the living. I wonder if the dead do not want visitors, do want to hear or feel their love ones mourning over their bodies. From this height my own presence below seems like a burden, seems like the dark spot that the living try to escape from through sleep.

I pull my spirit back into my chest and see again from my human level. The pines are pretending to sleep, but I know their games. I can feel the thumping of the big body eastern white behind me. He is tired, but awake and alert. The cemetery is also awake. Families of deer are all around and I can hear the mallard ducks singing and splashing in the pond. I cannot see or talk to the dead, but I know they are not sleeping. It is not that they are trapped or that they are unable to close their eyes, but that if they give in to sleep they know they will lose it all, that the earth will somehow disappear. I want to stay awake for them; I don’t want to miss anything.  

"There are things they did that I do not know"

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Pine Trees Sleep Standing Up--Blog Entry #4 Inspired By:

"The Weight"

by Linda Gregg

Two horses were put together in the same paddock.

Night and day. In the night and in the day

wet from heat and the chill of the wind

on it. Muzzle to water, snorting, head swinging

and the taste of bay in the shadowed air.

The dignity of being. They slept that way,

knowing each other always.

Withers quivering for a moment,

fetlock and the proud rise at the base of the tail,

width of back. The volume of them, and each other's weight.

Fences were nothing compared to that.

People were nothing. They slept standing,

their throats curved against the other's rump.

They breathed against each other,

whinnied and stomped.

There are things they did that I do not know.

The privacy of them had a river in it.

Had our universe in it. And the way

its border looks back at us with its light.

This was finally their freedom.

The freedom an oak tree knows.

That is built at night by stars.