A Tree-Book

by Susie Gharib

Sitting between the toes of a fir-tree,
D. H. Lawrence penned his psychoanalytic theories
of states and plexus.

He could almost hear the sap,
the tree-blood,
pulsating in those round, faceless presences.

Among those silent beings of earth and air,
he began to intuit tree-worship
and wished he could be a tree
to possess root-lust and be thought-free,
a blood-conscious entity.

That haven of Lady Chatterley
was Lawrence’s own sanctuary
on whose altar he could sacrifice
his self-conscious personality
and make his intuited tree-book
the arboreal lore of centuries.