Poetry vault: One for the piñons

By Zach Hively

Long may they stand.
​
Piñon trees are more patient than I am. Famously, they produce cones and nuts in cycles—every three to seven years, the internet tells me, which tracks with my undoubtedly flawed observations on my near-daily walks.

So, my delight simmered over when, earlier, this summer, I saw the cones starting to form in the ’hood.

I waited. I knew the birds would get theirs. I knew the ground needed its share. But I wanted some too.

I finally, finally, let my fingers dive in. They got sticky with pine sap that I couldn’t wipe on my clothes, could only rub in sand. I plucked a half dozen nuts from one young tree, just to taste, just to delight.

Imagine the feeling of cracking open your first wild-plucked piñon nut in years, and biting into the nothing inside.

What could I do but laugh? You can’t reasonably expect anything from a piñon tree except that it keep on standing longer than any human ever has—and even this, painfully, isn’t certain anymore.

In honor of the piñon shells, here’s a poem from the vault for the trees. (This poem is untitled, as are all the poems in Owl Poems [2022, Casa Urraca Press]).​

I might outlive the piñon forests
in these mountains, in my desert.
We are not meant to live longer
than whole swaths of trees.
Long enough to believe we always
have more time, enough of it to kill
some just to get through it, too much
to comprehend what it’s worth.
 
My older dog can admire a pine stick
for an hour, which I spend begging
for him to stay four, five more years.
I cannot spoon him and swoon at his sleeping
without hearing the hole, like a flooding well,
he’ll leave with me when he’s gone.
And he will be—gone.
He knows it, and he chews a branch.
 
I know it, and I distract myself
trying to get a signal. Five more years
—a miracle for him, while I might yet outlive
the piñon forests in these mountains,
in our desert. Someday, I will want
to die, to leave my own hole, to answer
the owl, earn her trust, find myself
outlived by the trees we have left.