The Methuselah Tree Poem by Kevin Patrick

perched with history in its weather-worn trunk
it dwells placidly pregnant with patience
ruled in bedrock of stoic sovereignty
amiable as a vegetable hermit
whose lived more lives
then father times
pet cat lazarus
purring with tenacity


Its clutches eternity
through its desiccated branches
resigned indefinitely
between comedy and tragedy
knowing both are two ends
of a teeter-totter tripping cosmos
that holds up the center
that is marked as the absurd.


For time
lays anchored
in its hoary roots
squeezing salvos of eons
that penetrate the earths ovule
softly sculpted by natures
calm organic geometry
ruled to the rhyme
of its indomitable sovereignty
a secondhand cousin
to fatal immortality


It has stood
over the ledge
of a California mountain
beating deeply but
furiously unbroken
by wind, fire and rain
and the grains of times
tick tocking execution


It has rising
before the rise of sky scrappers
sliced the hemispheres
with stores of steel
leading life's play
before unfertilized limestone
germinated and gave birth
to the acropolis
kicking with life
before Babylons gate
and was a kingdom
of sand and a barren wind
it has sang with triumph
before the pharaoh's pyramids
were nothing but sawdust
of mans fevered dreams
it has lasted nine lives
beyond seven geriatric wonders
standing long over the rubble
of mans crafted hubris


for over four millennium
its had to watch the sun and moon
perpetually play out as a variable drama
chasing each other around, like
a punch and judy show
all the while enduring
the politics of natures etiquette
like the forced smiles of wind on its bark
or false pleasantries of sunshine
and conversations with rain
boarders have come and go
its been a condo to nesting eagles
a way station for families of white tail deer
a cheap hotel for cheating raccoons
and a toilet for black bears
with Bark as old as Stonehenge
its life is a melancholic encyclopedia
encroached on a ledge of crowding pines
its navigated the landslides of life
awarded in its furrowed trunk

And as its wrinkled branches weave
like wild cephalopod antennas
praying towards the blue
palace of sky
It will stand
sheltered in stillness
of the canvass of eternity
waiting out the reapers dance
while our skulls are ready be bleached