Confession of the Oak Tree

I would shed my leaves in an instant,
If I could shake their delicate skeletons

off my frame, those brittle reminders
of last season's small failures.

I want to be bare and unencumbered.
Strip me naked; my rough bark

no longer shames me the way it used to.
Leave smooth skin to the saplings,

tender and thin, yet to survive
the droughts and floods I have weathered.

Sheath me in gnarled knobs and dimples,
a woody armor thick enough

to protect the sap I used to spill
at the peck of every careless bird.

Copyright © 2009 Alice Pettway All rights reserved
from Barbed Wire and Bedclothes
Spire Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission