Just Wanted To Say / 50 Above, 50 Below

Terrence this is stupid stuff.

Photo by Scotted400. Used under CCA-2.0

Just wanted to say

that you're really well groomed for no eyes,

and articulate for a Black.

You get around so quick in that wheelchair.

I love your accent. Did you study English before you came to this country?

Oh! And for a gender monstrosity, you're outrageously beautiful.

Just wanted to say.

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50 Above, 50 Below

A poet of America wrote that in winter 50 above is more to be feared by the trees than 50 below. An early thaw, predictably reversed, kills new growth. Better to stay frozen through the long, hard season. Better to send shoots out late.

But trained to expect winter, trained to fear another freeze, the precautious plant may never flower.

Fear 50 above more than 50 below, says an America of wild weather, threatening yet more ice. Fear 50 above more than 50 below, for the greater tragedy is to flower too soon. Someday will come the mildness and the sun, jagged shivs remade as moisture for a naked forest.

America concerns itself with the visible, the spectacle. It will not hear that trees are crowned twice: one seen and one unseen. One crown is alive with sex, drinking in light; the other is thick and slow, burdened with needy weight, its thankless, unwitnessed job to keep the body alive through the long season of want.

While feeding a flowering is taxing, growthless waiting still slowly taps reserves, until the tree itself questions whether it still contains the life it needs to bud. But the gardener in his deep concern whispers, “Fear 50 above more than 50 below. Accustom yourself to the cold.”

And I did.

I feared the warmth to protect myself from the frost. But the frost was wrong.

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