(if you are viewing this via email, the website has a recording of this poem and commentary; click the title above)
Commentary
This poem is the first fruit of considering a deliciously ambiguous phrase: “make friends with compromise.”
Can I rehabilitate the various—mostly negative—meanings of “compromise”? How does one befriend it, or befriend with it?
Trees show us one way. Much of their strength is in their ability to compromise. They say, “I’m standing here. But if the wind insists, I can bend, and move over there. The wind will die down, and I will live.”
The tree that serves as this poem’s background is behind the library where I work. It got blown down by a strong wind. We’re probably right to guess that its roots were inadequate for the kind of bending it needed that stormy night.
Below is a picture I took of the tree back when it was just twisted.
