A Mere Coincidence

A Mere Coincidence

It was winter and the trees were bare. 
Black branches against the tangerine sunset
looked like thousands of hands, their
fingers stretching to the heavens or
tributaries reaching for the sea. 
I looked at the trees on the horizon

and then at my own fingers, hands,
the barely visible veins, the miniscule
capillaries that journey from the
center of me to the distant points,
not unlike the rivers or the branches
reach toward their destinations.

Leaves crackled beneath my feet as I squatted down
and took a single oak leaf in my hand.  It was then that
I noticed how the veins stretched from stem to lobes,
branching out like a raised pen and ink drawing of a
naked tree or the tangle of nerves flowing from the spine. 
A picture came to my mind, the Amazon basin with its

tributaries sprawled from the Atlantic to deepest
rain forests or the great Mississippi Delta
when viewed from the sky with its silvery tendrils
flowing to the Gulf like the liquid silver necklaces
the Native Americans crafted in Santa Fe, where water
and trees are revered for their scarcity. 

Even organizational flow charts and family trees
follow this pattern as do interstates, highways,
rural routes if viewed from the sky or on a map. 
They are the man-made circulatory system of a nation,
and man’s attempt to create order out of chaos.
How is it then, that we all know the shape of a

bare tree on the horizon, the path of blood vessels illuminated
by an MRI, the topography of land cut by rivers and tributaries,
the sterile office flow chart, the cauda equina fanning
from our own spine down like the tail of a horse from which
it was named, and the shape of veins from a child’s leaf rubbing
and yet, we still choose to believe this is all a mere coincidence? 


SWPoet



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To the Reviewer:

Below is simply a try at concrete poetry just for fun.  However, the top version is the one that I would like to be used for reviews.
If you want to mention or review both, that's fine.  The words aren't identical as I've made some changes since doing the one below.

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A Mere Coincidence

It was winter and the trees were bare.
Black branches against the orange sky looked like
thousands of fingers stretching to the heavens or tributaries and
rivers flowing to the ocean.
I looked at the trees and then at my own fingers, hands,
the barely visible veins, the miniscule capillaries that spread from the center of me to
the distant points, not unlike those branches, not unlike water
on its journey to the sea. 
Leaves crackled beneath my feet and I picked one up to examine a single oak leaf, how the veins
reach from stem to leaftips, branching out like a raised
pen and ink drawing of a naked tree or the tangle of nerves branching
down from the spine.
A picture came to mind, the Amazon basin,
tributaries flowing to the Atlantic, or the great Mississippi Delta,
the view from an airplane, silvery tendrils flowing to the Gulf like the liquid silver necklaces
the Native Americans crafted in Santa Fe, where the water and trees
are revered for their scarcity.
Even flow charts and family trees follow this pattern
as do interstates, highways,
rural routes, the manmade circulatory system of a nation, if seen
from a plane or on a map.
How is it that we all know the shape of a bare tree on the horizon,
the path of blood vessels illuminated by an MRI,
the topography of land cut by
rivers and tributaries,
the sterile office flow chart, the Cauda Equina branching
from our own spine down
to our toes, and the shape of the veins of a leaf from
a child’s crayon leaf rubbing?
And yet, we still
choose to
believe
this is all
a mere
C
O
I
N
C
I
D
E
N
C
E
.


SWPoet