A Poem: If You Were Rock and I Were Tree

Periodically I write poems.  This morning, as I was sawing trees in my back yard, it occurred to me how long it takes to grow a tree limb.  Trees move, ever upward, but their growth is so slow that we humans don't think, mostly, about that fact.  Same with rocks.  Over eons, rocks grow and change, yet even more slowly than trees.

Our perception is that our own lives are long, drawn-out affairs.  But if rocks could think, they'd laugh at our view of them as stodgy, growth-less things.

I never knew my two grandfathers.  As I sawed through the fallen-down tree limbs, I thought how nice it would be if my two grandpas and I could hang out for even a few precious hours.  But then I thought, as I was cutting wood and walking over rocks, if granddaddy Dutcher and granddaddy Heydrick had been rocks, and I a tree, our temporal paths may well have intersected here on earth for even a few "brief" hours.  I put the "brief" in quote because I wonder what our human time would look like to hummingbirds, whose tiny wings beat so frenetically.

Here's the poem:

 If You Were Rock and I Were  Tree

Consider hummingbirds,

how fast they fly,

while humans

go lumbering by.

Consider the stately redwood,

how seeming slow it grows,

but truly fast

compared to slow-grown rock.



You are "old"

and I am "young,"

but if you were rock

and I were tree,

consider,

how fast,

I'd catch up to thee.

     bob dutcher, january 6, 2012