HEART WOOD

I have a new lover. He’s tall, seems like over 100 feet sometimes. His skin smells like honey and forest and sun-warmed resin. When I look at him, I feel like making love to him, and sometimes we do. He insists that I tell you that.

The first year, I kept finding nails hammered into him. I’d pull them out. Jigsaw puzzle chunks would tear out of him, layer after layer, peeling away like scabs, with these perfect round holes in them like bullet holes. Finally there were no more nails. I’d pull out the nails as gently as possible, whispering apologies. It reminded me of stories of manta rays and dolphins letting divers painstakingly unwind fishing line and pull hooks out of fins. He stayed very still and waited patiently, too.

Then it seemed that the die-back stopped and I couldn’t tell yet, but maybe the healthy needles were just a little greener. And were there a few more of them? Were they a little higher up this time, and a little thicker? And was it perhaps because we loved each other? When the last dry needles, and the small branches that hold them are finally bare, will the eagles come and nest there? Last week a golden eagle landed briefly on the railing of the deck. Checking out the neighborhood?

The wind comes off the lake, picking up the scent of algae-wrapped fish asleep in the murk, trout and bass and catfish. They’ve settled in already, waiting for winter. The wind scoops up the little glistening flecks of light and throws them down again. They tumble like dice across the water’s surface, divining the present, now and now and now again in endless revelations as long as there is light. After dark, the divining continues in secret, with no one but the sky to see it. On this blustery day it twinkles like circuitry on a switchboard. All those lights and flashes, sparkles and whiteness. A landscape of joy outside the window, the stage and props for the joy indoors of sitting mesmerized by the fire, notebook in lap. That’s in his scent, too.

I think, dazzling and dancing and, What is the exact right word for the blue of the water? A blue-green lake reflecting pines along the shore and waterweeds underneath. Not an astonishing blue, and yet it matters. Not the blue of sky, not blue jay, not country-cottage. Not Delft. More like mocha or latte, only instead of coffee it’s a milky blue lake.

I make offerings and pour milk into it, and I like to think I help make it that color faded denim, or help keep it that way. I pour Thank You, and Bless You, and Thank You, I Love You, from a pale blue pitcher with birds on it. I pray thoughts and it drinks them. I make jokes to myself: Lake-accino and Lake-au-lait and Thanks-a-latte.

My lover wants me to tell you what it feels like to fall in love again, and for the first time. The steady way it glows just below your skin and reminds you of who you are because of each other. He says, Say it! Say it! Tell them what it’s like… OK. Here’s how it is: I open my arms so my whole chest presses up to him, and he likes it. My fingers tingle when I open my hands and let him enter through my palms, my cheek flat against his chest, and that scent again, pulling off the lake and wafting up from the brown sugar crevices of his skin. I can’t inhale without closing my eyes and melting gratefully into him.

Tell them, he says, how you sometimes forget all about me and then suddenly remember and how you long to put your arms around me when that happens. Tell them how handsome you think I am, and how happy I make you and how often you tell me you are glad and grateful that we have each other.
Is it cheating on a man to fall in love with a sugar pine? I look out the window and talk to him. It’s cold in the mornings and at night now, so I stand in the dining room or on the landing and we talk. I can sit in the hot tub and watch the light as it moves up to his crown and disappears. The torn and faded green tissue paper kite is still there, its rippling string tail still caught in the second branch from the top. I hope this winter it finally blows loose and floats away. I blame it for the lightning strike.

During the drought, the brown needles kept appearing lower and lower until I thought he might be dying. Each time I visited I’d stand there and cry. I’d sprinkle birdseed and water and beg the birds to sing more, thinking they could call out the greening, raise the healthy sap and banish the damn kite. That’s how I fell in love with him.

Last night we were talking before I fell asleep. He nodded toward the lush, tall pine by the little forest I planted. Begin to notice her, to love her, that tall healthy pine by the shed. She lost a partner years ago and has many things to say. I can picture her easily. There is a huge stump beside her where I put peanuts and birdseed for the squirrels and jays. She has no branches along one whole side, where her partner used to be. In the morning I greet her and the others nearby. I thank her and sniff her skin. She speaks: We were here when they built the first cabins, and later, when it was a Japanese internment camp. We were here before the dam, before there was a lake at all.

The wind kicks up. I am watching the trees along the point across the channel. They lean together and rub branches. Watch how happy we are when we can grow close together, they say, how we love each other in the wind. See how easily our needles fit together, how they interlace. See how we can’t reach to touch each other when we have to grow alone or too far apart. See how things happen when you can begin to see? Just then, did you notice?

A burst of blackbirds pulses off the reeds in front of the house, gusting onto my deck in the low sun, gusting back toward the water. The lake grass, the sun, the insects, the seeds. The blue water. The whitecaps. The blackbirds. The sun. You see how it happens? says my lover.

My neighbor wanted to cut him down. The County Office of Hazardous Tree Removal wanted to cut him down. I threatened a lawsuit. I did all the usual things: I took photos and sent faxes. I signed paper work. I wrote a nasty letter, and even put in a good word for the not-dead, not-hazardous trees across the street that they also wanted to cut down. In the end, they fell silent and for now we are safe. Now I know you meant it when you told me you loved me, he says gently. They can’t cut me down as long as you’re here. Again, the birds. Arcing toward and away, towards the sun and back again, sweeping into the afternoon wind.