I go out to the woods after dinner when the light is almost gone, and breathe in mulch and something from the farm next door I can’t name but know. Two hundred yards in, the oak leans against the sky, wide and green-spreading. I’ve measured that oak with my arms. I counted that it took three of mine. I did this more than once. I'm not sure what I was looking for then, but I walked to it now. Through the claggy Maryland clay under my feet, roots stretch past the neighbor’s cracked driveway, past whatever I thought was the end of the division. They feel for water. Someone said, Weaver, I think. (I looked him up once. He's a prairie ecologist.) He said you cannot know the root from the visible plant. You can have similar species, but entirely dissimilar root systems. I read that, and my brother came to mind, the two of us at the same table, running around the same yard, and I realized how little that explained who he had become. So, I stand there, in front of the oak, arms around my own ribs, eyes moving up the trunk, tilting my head back to see the crow way up in its branches. The oak just stands there, rooted. It’s been here since before farmland decided it was farmland; residential divisions grew houses. What it became underground, where it goes when it goes deep down, I know I’ll never see. A cardinal sings out. Light drops. I go in and turn on the kitchen faucet to wash the dishes; my hands doing that while the rest of me is still standing out there, my arms around the oak.
Author’s Note
John Weaver was a prairie ecologist. Decades ago, he cataloged root systems under grassland. He found something strange: plants that looked nearly identical above ground sometimes had root structures with nothing in common. He studied and wrote about switchgrass and bluestem. I know he wasn’t writing about people. I reread it three times anyway.
My brother and I grew up together. He turned out to be someone I have to become reacquainted with every few years. I used to think that was strange. Lately I think it’s just what happens when two beings share a beginning and their lives go in different directions.
I really did measure the oak with my arms. I’ve done it more than once. I’m not sure why. I think I just wanted to know something had a (mostly) fixed size, when so little else seems to.
Upcoming…
A prose poem:
LIGNUM VITAE, 01 August 2026
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