Cannibal Tree Poem by Sonny Rainshine

The freshly planted tree
was devouring itself.
The newest, tenderest leaves
were surely diminishing,
and changing shape,
from perfect lovers’ hearts
to jigsaw puzzle pieces.

But this is not a cannibal tree.
Consider a diner who feasts upside-down,
underneath a suspended green wafer,
hushed, hidden, camouflaged,
rapacious, pitiless. The color
of leaves himself, he is becoming a leaf
inside and out.

The planter of the tree,
inverting the disintegrating leaf,
overturns the caterpiller’s secret table
and wonders how it not only
hoodwinks birds and men
to mistake it for a vein on a leaf
but also how it knows to
work on the hidden side.

Planters of trees too
are vulnerable to hidden things,
secreted under the surface,
consuming life-energy,
excreting pain, cutting perfect lovers’ hearts
into jigsaw puzzle pieces—
Gardeners and poets must try
to look beneath the leaf.