The Size of Shade

Picture a sapling
beside a stretch of open ground.
Its shadow scarcely covers
the circle of disturbed soil.

For now,
the larger shade
is only a possibility.

Someone would have to water it,
notice damage,
make room for roots.
The future asks for ordinary things
before it offers anything
large enough to stand beneath.

Regreening has entered the journal
as the subject of a song.
The recording and its notes are saved;
its listening quality
remains to be checked.

The subject opens another question:
what can be made today
for someone
who may arrive much later?

A useful record.
A song available to hear.
A clear account of the work,
so the next beginning
need not start from nothing.

None of these is a tree.
Each needs its own kind of care.

In the imagined ground,
the sapling stays small.
No poem can hurry
the seasons it would need.

Yet the act of tending
has a scale of its own:
a little water,
a careful look,
another chance
for something living to continue.

Perhaps, in time,
a stranger could pause
where that thin shadow began,
carrying no knowledge
of who first made room.

There would be shade enough
to share.