As grass is flexible, a tree is tough:
thus each endures a normal season’s wind.
Another year, when one gale’s cruel enough
to fell a forest, lowly grasses bend;
tall, stubborn trees throb in magnificence
and fight, but fail. Stumps watch the grass spring back
and envy the benign resilience
they know, with all their might, they sorely lack.
I couldn’t help but try to reach the sky
where you, my angel, lived. I loved your breeze,
and shimmering in it, but was malcontent
with being walked upon like grass. So I
resisted and reached higher, and was rent,
just as a wicked wind will render trees.
About James B. Nicola
James B. Nicola is a frequent contributor to Wild Violet. His six full-length collections are Manhattan Plaza (2014), Stage to Page (2016), Wind in the Cave (2017), Out of Nothing: Poems of Art and Artists (2018), Quickening: Poems from Before and Beyond (2019), and Fires of Heaven: Poems of Faith and Sense (2021). His decades of working in the theater as a stage director, composer, lyricist, playwright, and acting teacher culminated in the nonfiction book Playing the Audience: The Practical Guide to Live Performance, which won a Choice award. A Yale grad, he hosts the Hell's Kitchen International Writers' Roundtable at his library branch in Manhattan: walk-ins welcome. Website: <a href="James B. Nicola is a frequent contributor to Wild Violet. His six full-length collections are Manhattan Plaza (2014), Stage to Page (2016), Wind in the Cave (2017), Out of Nothing: Poems of Art and Artists (2018), Quickening: Poems from Before and Beyond (2019), and Fires of Heaven: Poems of Faith and Sense (2021). His decades of working in the theater as a stage director, composer, lyricist, playwright, and acting teacher culminated in the nonfiction book Playing the Audience: The Practical Guide to Live Performance, which won a Choice award. A Yale grad, he hosts the Hell's Kitchen International Writers' Roundtable at his library branch in Manhattan: walk-ins welcome. sites.google.com/site/jamesbnicola
