if a tree branch falls, will anyone pick it up?
it doesn’t have to be in the woods, it need not be an isolated or pointedly experimental thought,
it happens on your morning dog walk, in the green courtyard, the commons for human folk, hosting
rows of arboreal cousins,
intermixed to these root systems the canine urine truly becomes, giving the veins of the tall carbon repositories a drink from the liquid well that is our living room food bowls,
and on these walks in the new sunning hours of the dewey dawn,
our rigid and strong cousins shade us from the pre-coffee UV onslaught, and if we see one of their arms laid down - a symbol of police abolition - (how can we reallocate our budgets?)
those twigs and leaves now sit uninvited on sidewalks,
as grassy barefoot invitations to see them closer, dropped many feet too low and out of place,
calling to their high hanging partners for a lift, any form of help up and away from the height where pollen and bird droppings settle, and back towards the squirrel’s home, the cockatoo nest, the cathedral where cosmic collections of sun-rays turned engender-er of energy and marvelous processes’ keeps the tree alive,
this fallen branch is on your way, its on your dogs path and creates, out of a seemingly uncontrollable and fixed universe, more Time, measurable in seconds, for the pooch to sniff the new pallet of smells, and for you to tug away because you are already late, even though this Time was just created, how…
will any one human see this branch as more than a dog’s interest?
will someone pick up this branch out of the goodness of the commons’ heart?
Or only when contracted and paid will a ‘worker’ take the steps away from a dazed, half awake stumble, to remove the branch and place it somewhere ELSE, wherever that may be?
for a tree branch fallen does not serve a purpose, it’s out of place,
its role to the host terminated by who knows what strong force, certainly not a body building woodpecker,
and as such, the horizontal fate of this bifurcating bastion of bio-spherical beauty is made tragic with each passerby, those bipedal steps proceeding in willful detachment —
either because their gaze is singular to a ‘private experience in public’ aka social media,
or raindrops of responsibility, participation, and expenditure are not forecast on that day, or any —
lest some Other impetus demands action, preservation of your inner answerable reserves supposes a tantamount value system in negation of nature, a detachment from the wooded cousins we breath through, because they are broken,
they come with a pre-existing condition to be used by us, turned into pulp, moved only because commerce and capitalism constitutes it to be so,
and to mend these arms, to place in tourniquet and bandage when snapped, these branches—not far removed from comparisons to our own gesticulating limbs— can be shirked as the task of another, a physician poised in paid position to proposition a healing condition, as insurance dictates,
but who is the nature doctor, the Other who prescribes a mending schedule when the tree needs it the most, who schedules this new patient, who does an intake form requiring a signature of sap?
are there any copays and deductibles for the knobs on the twigs?
do the determinants of deciduous developments see themselves as healthcare workers, or are they just 9-5 paid desk drivers of HOA and management protocols, just doing their job, as greenbacks dictate the delineation of arboreal insurance plans?
if any unpaid resident removes the branch through altruistic or selfish means, induction into the Doctors Without Border Tree Edition is imminent,
and in this “tree-diatric” union, one hopes those kind souls could retain their ability to practice, without Big Pine or Big Oak influencing the medicine they freely give, as
Medicare For Trees