Undue Hardship

"Undue hardship," they called it.

I nodded and agreed.

"Too risky; too liable," they said.

Ah. Not it, then. But me.

This body is a blighted forest

alive with decay and rot.

Thrumming swarms of dauber wasps

wither midair and drop.

Ghost town globes of mud mâché

hang hollow and forgot.

Lamentatious lyrics languish

in empty barren boughs.

Haunting windsorrow songs,

leafcrush, and boneclatter sound.

In moldering pipes of barkbound organs

gangrenous heartwood no longer pounds.

When pine pitch neither beads nor bubbles

and sap flows tainted and impure;

when paper birch won't peel or flay

and pockmarked ash is beetlebored

when all the wood awaits the fall

only oaks have the gall to endure.

When undue hardship comes to call,

only oaks will, strong and stalwart, stand.

Through lightning strike and forest blight,

weeping trunks be damned.

Treelore in limb, they proudly persevere

as only oak trees can.

This body is a swaying oak,

a stubborn, deep-rooted survivor,

a contumacious canopy,

a consummate arboreal labor.

"Undue hardship," they called it.

I nodded and agreed.

"Too risky; too liable," they said.

Ah. Not it, then. But trees.