Memory Bubbles

The poem Arboreal Advisor poem by K.Tai evoked childhood memories, which floated unrooted, carrying a variety of sensational feelings that transported me back to my childhood in Jerusalem. The Jerusalem Pine tree (Pinus Halepensis), together with the magical golden light of the city, became the subject of these manifestations when transformed into Memory Bubbles.

 Arboreal Advisor 

Our sandaled running feet stopped at the foot of a pine rising sticky and sweet 

My brother’s cheek peach round against the cracked puzzlework of bark 

as he tilted his head back to see where the tree’s paint brush tip

tickled the blue of Big Sky Country.

His blonde mop, cut square around his face like a jolly old Quaker, swung back 

as he grasped the first branch 

and pulled himself against the scratchy stalwart arboreal sentinel. 

From his easy squat on the roundness of the second big bough he beckoned me.

Bouncing with the bottom woody arm, my stomach skittered a long moment.

My path to the place where my back was solid against the tree is unremembered,

the same way we find ourselves somehow in middle age.

But we knew with certainty that these branches would hold platform perches, 

no, 

a tree house! 

perfect because we met that tree in the midst of a 20-acre wood

and we nailed slivery boards 

solid as our future dreams against 

the sky.

Kari Tai, July 2020