Slumbering Oaks

Slumbering Oaks and the Outworking of Probate

When did it happen, you ask? Look,
It’s easier for me to walk outside
These days, to walk out either door and stay
For an hour, and I’m working on it,
Working on extending my time. I’ve come
Out into controlled sunlight, down to this patch
Of yard, my pocket clicking with acorns and my
Hand clanking with a bouquet of soup cans
And the bladed pressure of the trowel

Against my hip. In a while, I’ll kneel
And put my grip to the stubby maple
Handle and feed the cans with granulated
Planet, topping them off and then thumbing
Small graves down into each center.
There I will bury, there I will
Bury these sharp-tipped little bodies and lay them
To rest until we swing around to the
Close blaze again. And when that course

Is completed, I will bear them onto the porch
Where they can begin performing their soft magic,
Their wonder-bartering, exchanging fire for green,
Pushing down deeper, lifting up higher, until
Terra bursts and life spills out. But forgive
Me — I am astray in my own front
Yard, halfway down a path you never
Asked me to clear. You’re not interested
In my cans or my plans. Your need sits over

There on the flaking front steps, its knees drawn up
Beneath its chin, watching you, its lord,
Pretend to be patient with me, patient
With me in controlled sunlight. This house?
That’s right — that’s your need’s aim, isn’t it?
Well, it’s easier for me to walk
Outside these days, and to stay out here,
And here. Would you believe that I feel safer
Out here than in there, out here where there are

No carpets to pad my joints nor banisters
To steady me as I ascend? It’s so,
And I’ve said it. If you can stop staring,
Stop planning the tactics of how you’ll make me agree
With you, I’ll tell you just enough to back you
Off. Incidentally, how does it feel
To be a pressure-relief valve? Ready to
Listen now? The truth is ever within
Me, and here is a crumb of it: I was

Wrong for a long age, and my errors
Were the locks that kept me inside the house.
Don’t you know it’s easier to protect
A structure if you prowl its corridors
Yourself, always aiming beams into
Corners and listening to the moon-cooled squeaks
Of settling? I performed such acts
For so long, and only in recent breaths
Did it come to me how tired I was

Of the night watchman’s shoes. I was
Observant, I was full of care, because
I feared squandering a costly gift, and do
You know how much a place like this goes for?
Do you know where I come from? If you
Understood the true, true difference
Between linoleum beneath a rented roof
And padded Berber beneath paid-off dormers —
Three of them — then you would understand

All my actions, all my motives, all my
Acid fear, all my double-checks and
Reminder lists. The place is mine, you see,
Paid for and deeded (and I’ve come to see how
Vital deeds can be to where and how
One rests), placed in my undeserving grubby
Hands with the stroke of a pen I never
Employed. Deeded, given, granted, gifted,
And my key-chain is now weightier,

An anchor in my pocket. But I well
Misunderstood the endowment, you see, and that
Is the matter entire, the misunderstanding
That portended a shaking of earth and fine cracks
In the footers. How did I miss it? As is
My Southern custom, I made an assumption, yes I
Did, an assumption, and neither feast nor candle
Marks the day. Be patient, I am telling.
I assumed when the broker showed my name

On the paper (was it misspelled?) and pressed
The keys into my pale palm that I would
Be the tenant, the occupant, but also
That the management company would be sending
Someone around to attend to the yard, the gutters,
The fuses, the leaks, the basement intruders, the broken
Pane, the miniscule colonies in the attic.
But these things fell to me (did the
Deed bear my name?) and so I performed them,

And badly, and pounded my fingertips to the
Bonetips on the phone, leaving archives
Of detailed and anguished messages to the
Original owner at his architecture
Firm, volumes of voicemails, updated and revised
With painful regularity, and not
One of them answered, not one call returned,
Not one plea acknowledged. Can your thermostat
Sense the scorch of the anger that chewed at my

Beams, anger compounded by every other
Voice on the block reminding me that the original
Owner was such a benevolent, such an attentive
Figure? And yet each of them could point
To their own library of futile phone
Calls and texts. And this reminds me of
Something else: why do all my neighbors
Resent me so much? Surely they have
As much justification in being crimson

With resentment as I — ah, but the
Difference is that I spoke my own
Questions, spoke my own piece into existence,
While they remained and remain dumb
And mute and pathetic in their pacings next to
Their phones, lamed by wearing furrows in the
Carpet, paralyzed by the questions they won’t
Ask. But back to the matter before your need
Drags you down the street and away — he is rocking

Back and forth on the steps, and any expert
Will tell you that’s never a good sign.
So my requests were ignored, my messages spilt
Into the void, never to be retrieved
Nor jotted onto an agenda. They were gone,
You see, and all the energy that fueled the furnace
Of my projects and makeovers and maintenance? Well,
It was gone, too — vanished up the
Chimney, as it were. And let me tell you

That I kept warm last season by means of kindling
And logs, resentment and disappointment, by hating
The owner, the key-giving betrayer. By the
Time the rime in the shady spots had faded
And the ladybugs were platooning on the
Soffets, by the time the daffodils
Were daggering their way into the changing air,
My fire was dying out. Not, get this,
Not because I ran out of fuel, but rather

Because I had begun to wear warmer clothes,
Garments of my own pattern and stitching,
My own assembly, if that makes sense. I was
Doing for myself, and I took far too
Long to realize this fact, this verb
Of self, for myself. But retardation
Of realization notwithstanding, I did
Come to see that I was no longer
Walking the silent halls at night with my

Battery power, no longer cataloguing
My to-do’s, no longer leaving the original
Owner messages about what I needed.
I used what I had, what I had been given,
Used it in rapid and prodigal ways. And I
Took inventory, too. Settle down —
I’m going to the end; we are headed
For closing. I took inventory, not only
Of the rooms and cupboards, but of situations,

Statuses. And what I saw on the spreadsheet
Reflected in my own glasses was error.
Error, raw error in ever blaming or being
Angry at the one who gave me the house.
He gave it — do you understand the word?
He gave it and I received it, and this has a
Hard “therefore:” I was responsible for it.
I. I was. He had designed it, built it,
Powered it, furnished it, and transferred it to me.

And then he had left me to it, left to go
Speak other dreams into existence.
And while he was out planning and creating and bestowing
And bequeathing, I was melting down his voicemail
With my demands and complaints. You asked when it
Happened…when I became a homeowner instead
Of a squatter. It happened when I discovered
Gratitude, because gratitude is vast,
And it pushed all the other occupants

Out, and when it did, when gratitude
For what I owned stood tall in my front room,
No one watching the two of us, I owned it
Outright and entire in that breath-span.
I owned what he gave, and my past
Chokings sprouted from expecting him to double
Back. And you know, he never does.
If I won’t live in my house, someone
Else will. And if I tremble to step

Outside of my house, I will fade within it,
Like my own voice in a foolish demand, far
Down in the cellar. So there, now. You’ve heard.
Take your need and go. I’ve been distracted
In the telling, and I don’t want to
Forget where I put these cans. Time
Will come, and oaks will shade my house, because
What I bury always pushes up
Into the open, always lives again.

~ S. K. Orr