Branch

Megan McLaughlin

How,

little birch,

can you cradle broken boughs?

Wrist-thin branches wrenched by winds

born of bud tussle breezes.

How, little birch?

How do you still 

bend,

wend your way through shafts of light,

singing mending songs to the gentle birds

who once perched 

in the space the sky made for you?

Staring into your weathered and unwithered knots

–as though they were aged eyes–

suddenly,

tears edge my own. 

Why?

Why haven’t you let go?

Something in the same huff of warm air

that shifts even your stillest branches

and turns your leaves

and settles over my cheek

feels like a knowing smile. 

Just a little while. 

Because the sun will set

and slip below the treeline, 

and broken things

–branches, winds, and wings–

will fall.

But not yet. 

Because there is still vinca swaying on slender stems,

and beside them, 

ants still roam

–and small birds

they will cherish wrenched wood

and they will make their homes

and because wind maimed branches is not all this world 

has ever

will ever

know. 

For all that is taken

why give?

If none gave,

then where would the gentle birds live?

Then who would perch

on paper skin,

on the space the sky made

—yes, branchless today—

but never empty.

Not for the boughs it knew well, 

not for the stories the birds

will tell

of a little birch that held on

–that still holds them,

even now.

Megan McLaughlin is a junior English and Secondary Education major at Saint Anselm College. She hopes to pursue a career in teaching. In her free time, she enjoys reading, drinking tea with lots of honey, gardening and going on walks with her family. Megan is very grateful to have been able to contribute to the humanitas journal, and is in awe at the various forms of creative expression that her peers have put forth for St. A’s readers to experience.