Field Notes #6: Oak Tree Feeding

You are reading the weekly poetry newsletter, "Entangled Worlds: A Field Guide to Hope in a World Unraveling." Read more about it here.

Fellow waylarks! Gather here. Take shelter from the cold gusts for above us a witch wind stirs the maple trees emblazoned with their gold crowns. The vultures stir in the last light of the day and take refuge in the bony carcasses of elms and ashes. The streambed remains a cracked mud path even with a soaking storm passing through. And all around us deer and squirrels hunger and grasp what they can.

Now is the time that seems ruled by scarcity. Men’s hearts feel colder (if that’s possible).

But it is also a time when the veil is lifted. The noise of modern society feels even more off-key, like the deepening dark and biting cold reminds our bones of a time when gathering around a fire together, sharing stories, saved us all from a long hunger.

We cannot go on this journey alone. We can only go as far as the person with the least among us. We thrive only when we all feed. So take the oak’s great lesson: we have many names along the paths we tread, and most do not belong to us alone.

A Name for Every Hunger

The oak has a name
for each of its hungers. 

Crawling devourer.
Mouthless, soaring under
the summer moon.
(Luna moth).

Strange sunless cousin
that bores in roots
and befriends mushrooms.
(Bear corn).

Immune riddle
that once
wrote many stories.
(Oak gall wasp).

Thousands of names stack up
in the oak's long memory
and each one beats out a wisdom
born by deep roots and thousands of suns:
to eat is to feed,
to survive is to be more than one,
to be alive is to be many.

So, when a single child goes hungry
it is as if we have forgotten
our own name.

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