Our Tree

I sit in the shadow
of a tree that existed
before the American
Revolution, in its trunk
somber realities of a past:

my own self imagining
a noose draped around
one of its sturdy branches,
Executioner ready to send
bodies limp, hanging from
this accessory to murder.

Yes.
This tree is an accessory
to murder, though it lacks
conceptions of Right and
Wrong, it stood as the post
for denigration of a people.

And yet we treasure it,
I treasure it, under its
majestic shadow I wonder
where is the axe clutched
in calloused hands to tear
it down?

There will never be one.
Oh how I feel uneasy about this!

Beautiful knotted branches,
trunk so firmly rooted I cannot
fathom its atrophy;
the promise of history,
unknown and unexpected,
as I scour branches for
glimmers of memory.

And there it is:
beauty is turned upside
down as I tumble, through Time,
the Antebellum emerging from
gravestones, more beauty caked
in layers over lines of savagery:
it is unmistakable.

How can reconcile its elegance
with the facade it exists in?
Should I, even, I wonder as
I continue to unspin thoughts
carefully, thinking this unsettling
feeling a motivator toward
something great.

I stare up again, but cannot
think of an answer, not now,
not here, I want to let
this beauty fade.