Living Tree

It’s said they planted trees by graves to soak up spirits of the dead through roots into the growing wood. The favorite in the burial yards I knew was common juniper. One could do worse than pass into such a species. I like to think that when I’m gone the chemicals and yes the spirit that was me might be searched out by subtle roots and raised with sap through capillaries into an upright, fragrant trunk, and aromatic twigs and bark, through needles bright as hoarfrost to the sunlight for a century or more, in wood repelling rot and standing tall with monuments and statues there on the far hill, erect as truth, a testimony, in ground that’s dignified by loss, around a melancholy tree that’s pointing toward infinity.