When I Become a Tree

Part 1:

This afternoon I watch you practice your tai chi and your kung fu
I am enthralled by the way your body moves
It feels so good just to be near you

again
Many, many years ago
You loved me with all your soul
But I didn't know
You tried your best to explain that to me
But I was just a blind elephant who didn't understand
why every time I reached out to humans
I found them flat
Now you tell me a story
about a student of kung fu
who went to a master who lived as a hermit
alone in the woods
The master said he would not teach him anything
unless he pulled a full-grown tree from the ground
with his hands
So the student trained himself and practised
many, many years
until at last the tree he was pulling on broke from it's roots
He asked the master, “Will you take me as your student now?”
The master replied, “What can I teach you?
You can already pull a tree from the ground”

Part 2:
I look through your notebooks while you're out
Some of your writing is legible

But most of the nouns and action verbs are blurred

Like some sort of code

By the time I decipher how much you missed me

You say that's old news
Like the light of a star that's burned out

As if nothing more can be written now

Nothing new to be found in the familiar

I come to you as a student
Seek you in your hermit's apartment

I only want to sit at your feet
and learn who we are today

But you are the tree
Perhaps you can forgive, but you will not be moved
by me

You insist there are no lessons here

And say the kung-fu master in your fable

was just lazy