what happens when you uproot a cedar tree?
when the stories kept captive in its trunk lie dormant in the arab spring
what happens when the roots have absorbed the tyranny of those bombs
that were dropped on the daughter of the hills
and the orphans cried into the setting son that was blotted out by collapsing rooftops
and their limbs
my first-time taking shelter inside the same earth that threatened to swallow us whole
the nakba of her native roots
cauterized and catastrophized
25 feet long and lateral
6 meters into child sized graves
soft soled shoes
the taller the tree the larger the canopy
the more susceptible to rotting at the inner core of what it means
to be home
on high rocky out crops
outlasting thousands of years of despoil and maraud
only to be plucked from well drained richness
cardamom and baharat
crassly left to yield to a foreign wind
into clay soil that is turned by the hands that erase the colors from the piney sprays
with each gnashing of their grafting blades
what happens when she is improperly dug
transplanted in a place we can’t hear the sea lapping up against
morning mugs of nes café and halawa
the torrid shock is severe
she may end up completely void of the coping required to stay brown
in wake of drought
an herbarium of decay
cedrus libani incorruptible despite
burning of vestiges of war fought by men who can’t tend to their lies no more
temples erected by demi gods
how many times will our memory and land be robbed
will they use her timber for genocide and fleets
close your doors oh Lebanon
that the fire may not devour the cedars
that stand holding hands in the forest of god
still damp from solomon’s solace
what happens when we rename a cedar
from Mariam to Mary, reduced by flames
fair branches and canopy shade
what happens when the last cedar dies abroad
who will carry her home and bury her in her grandfather’s yard?
