Tatul Sonentz Papazian - THE VANISHING TREE

The old woman sits on a white wicker chair

alone in the backyard of her grandson’s house

in a small New England town where the air

is crisp and fresh with the smell of the sea…

She sits staring at a lone chestnut tree

shedding its malodorous flowers on a lawn recently mowed by her great-grandson

whose name was the same as her young spouse

whose face -- now a haze in her misty mind --

no longer haunts her lonely bed…

“May you grow old on one pillow,”

her mother had said on her wedding day --

“Mek bardzi vra tzeranaq…” heard a long,

long time ago, long before time stopped

for them on that early spring day far far away, when the sun turned blood red… or was it

the ground he had stood on that turned

crimson, as he fell?  She can no longer tell… though she can clearly see the chestnut tree

his grandfather had planted in their garden as a child – ignoring his mother’s forewarning

of the foul-smelling flowers of the chestnut tree. “I love the smell of chestnuts roasting slowly

on the red hot manghal,” the boy had answered, digging deeper into the native soil…

All in white, the tree was in full bloom then -- like a bride -- and she can even now, after eons, hear a snippet of an old song sung on her wedding  day – “Arevid mernem yar jan…” may I die for your sun, my love… and

 with one fatal blow of the yataghan,

his radiant sun had faded into a faint glow

of life floating in her womb, nourished

by her blood, spared–it seemed--for a fate

that loomed ahead far worse than death –

a life of the living dead….

Later, before freedom would hail at another springtime in May – as a lone servant

in her own house -- in the cold crisp winter of that crimson year, she was told by her savage landlords to cut down some limbs off the bare chestnut tree to burn as firewood to heat a house built on love, now petrified with freezing grief

at the sight of the severed hands and limbs

of its builders and their trees….

“That was the tree of the whole family,”

murmurs the old woman to no one in sight --  for under its canopy, they had collected the spiny burrs from the ground, recovering

the chestnuts and preparing them for the roast –

and the aroma of the sizzling fruit attracted

all the children and grandchildren, as the family gathered as one around that chestnut tree --     not too long after the stench of its flowers

had faded from memory….

Startled by the hand of his grandchild on her frail shoulder the old woman starts sobbing

and begging, “Don’t cut down the chestnut tree,

don’t cut down the family…” startled in his turn

the grandson says “Nani jan we have no chestnut tree in our yard. That’s the pear tree in the neighbor’s backyard you’re looking at... nobody is cutting any…”

Oblivious to her grandson’s plea

the old woman repeats between sobs…

“Don’t cut down the family tree….”

Tatul Sonentz

2010