Teesta Review: A
Journal of Poetry, Volume 8, Number 2. November 2025. ISSN: 2581-7094
The Tree Of Compassion
(Ailanthus altissima)
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John Charles Ryan
with autumn’s inaugural frost your leaflets break
off and abandon in one fell swoop
lilting to land encrusted by miniscule ice lumen
littered with wilting white oak lobes
in wintry witness your comportment staunchly sooted
by summer’s sappiest residues
spidery unleaved crown jaggedly angled against
pallid sky dimmed with frost flecks
viridescent lichen smudges up your trunk the only
vivid umlauts among dullest duff
hollowed stems with spongy yellowish guts yield to
fingertip touch like foam insulation
when spring fervor seizes you will pitch your kin
into the remotest corners of the lawn
over stockade fences under flowering dogwoods
spiralling through cracked patio pavers
tethered together by perambulating roots ensnaring
your progeny impossible to dislodge
creeping up though cropped by weed shears pruners
pluckers whackers whipper snippers
fetid foliage fragrance pubescent stems perfuse
auras with stench luring lurid lantern flies
perpetually disseminating self and species
recollections of seasons’ unrelenting successions
obstinate ally yet heavenly gift traduced as
stinking rancid alien invasive baneful devilish
not a sumac but ailanthus tree of the divine
and altissima the one who ascends the highest
your contours of compassion in frozen form diffuse
earthbound suffering with tenderness.
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