Beautiful Trouble

Consolation

 Consolation Once there was a walnut tree that shook its sorrows onto our house. At night we could hear them clatter to the roof, tumbling over shingles,wobbling down the pitch. In the bellowing wind, the tree bent beneath the eaves. Its branches tapped and scraped at our window until my brother too unfurled from the tight husk of sleep. What were we to do? A boy, a girl, adrift in our beds, washed in the shadows of a tree bereft. On autumn days its roots followed me all over the yard. Hulls lay about.Squirrels pillaged the hollow snouts. We raked the torn leaves into piles, and in the chilled evenings they burned. The smoke lifted from loam to limbs; ash settled on our shadows, our coats. What would we make of a life both blighted and blessed? There was trouble all around and everywhere little mercies. ...