Lone Oak

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 I stare down the same oak tree that has been imprinted on my earliest memories,

I've watched it through the seasons,

Lush and green,

Barren and brown with cold wind moving it's branches,

I have seen many a "Car for Sale by Owner" parked in the shade,

Lemonade stands,

Yard sales,

Even trucks with the bed down, holding a litter of puppies, "free to a good home",

Men, women, children,

Hundreds of faces,

People who make up the blood and backbone of this tiny town,

All have come together beneath this tree,

I see it everyday now,

Like a checkpoint,

A save,

I've made it far enough to see this tree,

That has watched three generations of my family drive by,

I wonder if any other of them notice it,

This old oak seated by the intersection of railway and roadway,

Just down the road,

From my grandparent's home,

The one where my aunts grew up,

Where my father picked up my mother for their first date,

Right down the road from the first double wide that became the start point for my family,

Down the road from where I currently reside,

It haunts me,

I wonder if it knows me too,

Has it watched me grow and spread my branches too?

From the little girl in frilly white socks and Mary Janes, in the back seat, headed to Sunday school,

To the young child who was excited to sit on her nana's porch in a discount Walmart kiddie pool, listening to the sound of the wind chimes tinkling in the warm wind of a Georgia summer,

Did it see the dark circles under the eyes of the tween, coming in late with her mother, trying to have a peaceful night away from the man she should've not married?

I wonder if it watched the teen come by that evening, just to use the cover of night to slip out to see her terrible teenage friends...

But at the end of the day it's just a lone oak,

Like I am a lone soul,

Being present as time passes,

We both sit out in the calm evening wind, hearing the sounds of the crickets, bullfrogs and cicadas sing,

Aging yet still frozen in time in this place that has changed so much,

I dread the day I don't pass by it, when it stands no more, or when I have not the sight to see it with.

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