Needle

When tall neighbors shadow the understory, when need for the shining is shaded under a far-flung roof of leaves, the aspen chooses smallness, the squat, humble door into the Bethlehem cathedral, the narrowing way. There will be no glorious ascent without the felling. There will be no touching sun without the lower branches dropping to ground. The trunk becomes the needle, offers its eye for dromedaries. The trampling to collapse, the slow constriction in the throat, stoppering of breath. The rich routes of silk, flow of fluids cut. What would you call this sawing off of self, branch by branch, leaving only the scars, the blackeye knobs scissoring up the bark, tracks of phantom limbs? The park service calls it self-pruning. The ranger calls it necessary shedding. The biologist calls it a sharp little trick of abscission. It’s a stab of death for life, surgery to rise higher, reach sunshine. The sewing up of each mouth in order to speak sky.