"Dear Scout" by Erin Everson
You knew me for a year.
I’d come along the same time of day, most days,
to the hill where you liked to lay.
I’ll never know your true thoughts,
Were you oblivious? Scared?
Yet day after day you sat behind the fence,
beneath the great oak, patient.
That same oak that watched you and me grow.
You once stared as a squirrel swirled up its bark.
I watched too, but got lost in the sprawl of branches.
And still I wonder,
did the small branch bending high to the sky ever know
the one near the trunk?
Both are part of the tree.
And the great oak gives each life, one to anchor the swing,
one to weather the storm.
You knew me for a year.
I’d come along the same time of day, most days,
to the hill where you liked to lay.
I’ll never know your true thoughts,
Were you oblivious? Scared?
Yet day after day you sat behind the fence,
beneath the great oak, patient.
That same oak that watched you and me grow.
You once stared as a squirrel swirled up its bark.
I watched too, but got lost in the sprawl of branches.
And still I wonder,
did the small branch bending high to the sky ever know
the one near the trunk?
Both are part of the tree.
And the great oak gives each life, one to anchor the swing,
one to weather the storm.